business presentation mckinsey

100+ Real Consulting Presentations from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and More

By Paul Moss

We’ve gathered presentations from top consulting firms that you can use to inspire your own slide making.

For this post we’ve gathered 100+ real presentations from top consulting firms around the internet for you to review, analyze, and learn from. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and each provides a different look into how top quality consulting presentations get created and delivered to clients. 

After finishing this article, make sure you check out our advanced courses to see how you can learn to build your own high-quality, consulting-style slides from scratch.

The Internet's Best Slides

Search through our curated library of REAL slides to find inspiration for your next presentation

• Reshaping NYCHA support functions   (BCG)
•   Loose dogs in Dallas: Strategic Recommendations to Improve Public Safety and Animal Welfare   (BCG)
•   Melbourne as a Global Cultural Destination   (BCG)
•   The Open Education Resources ecosystem   (BCG)
•   The True-Luxury Global Consumer Insight (7th Edition) (BCG)
•   Evaluating NYC media sector development and setting the stage for future growth   (BCG)
•   The Electric Car Tipping Point   (BCG)
•   Projecting US Mail volumes to 2020   (BCG)
•   Next Generation Manufacturing (2016)   (BCG)
•   Corporate Ventures in Sweden (2016)   (BCG)
•   Port of Los Angeles Clean Truck Program – March 2008   (BCG)
•   USPS Future Business Model   (McKinsey)
•   Investment and Industrial Policy: A Perspective on the Future   (McKinsey)
•   Outperformers: High-growth emerging economies and the companies that propel them   (McKinsey)
•   Technology’s role in mineral criticality (World Materials Forum)   (McKinsey)
•   Challenges in Mining: Scarcity or Opportunity?   (McKinsey)
•   Modelling the potential of digitally-enabled processes, transparency and participation in the NHS   (McKinsey)
•   Addressing the Global Affordable Housing Challenge (2016)   (McKinsey)
•   Capturing the Full Electrical Efficiency Potential of the UK (2012)   (McKinsey)
•   Digital Luxury Experience (2017)   (McKinsey)
•   Digitally-Enabled Processes in the NHS (2014)   (McKinsey)
•   How Companies can Capture the Veteran Opportunity (2012)   (McKinsey)
•   Insurance Trends and Growth Opportunities for Poland (2015)   (McKinsey)
•   Laying the Foundations for a Financially Sound Industry (2013)   (McKinsey)
•   From Poverty to Empowerment (2014)   (McKinsey)
•   Consumer privacy in retail   (Deloitte)
•   TMT Outlook 2017: A new wave of advances offer opportunities and challenges   (Deloitte)
• Deloitte SEA CFO Forum Southeast Asia Business Outlook   (Deloitte)
• Deloitte Kenya Budget 2022/23 Webinar   (Deloitte)
• The Shopping Centre Handbook 4.0   (Deloitte)

Bain & Co.

•   2011 China Luxury Market Study   (Bain)
•   Bain & UC Berkley Operational Excellence (2010)   (Bain)
•   Fintech New York: Partnerships, Platforms and Open Innovation   (Accenture)
•   Shaping the Sustainable Organization   (Accenture)
•   The Decade to Deliver: A Call to Business Action   (Accenture)
•   Fueling the Energy Future   (Accenture)
•   Cracking the Code on Consumer Fraud   (Accenture)
•   Right Cloud Mindset: Survey Results Hospitality   (Accenture)
•   Unleashing Competitiveness on the Cloud Continuum   (Accenture)
•   Whole Brain Leadership: New Rules of Engagement for the C-Suite   (Accenture)
•   Federal Technology Vision 2021: Full U.S. Federal Survey Findings   (Accenture)
•   Accenture Consumer Behavior Research: The value shake-up   (Accenture)
•   Tech Adoption and Strategy for Innovation & Growth   (Accenture)
•   Intelligent Operations for Future-Ready Businesses   (Accenture)
•   When, Where & How AI Will Boost Federal Workforce Productivity   (Accenture)
•   How fit is your allocation strategy?   (EY)
•   European Banking Barometer (2015)   (EY)
•   EY Price Point: global oil and gas market outlook, Q2 | April 2022   (EY)
•   IBOR transition: Opportunities and challenges for the asset management industry (EY)
•   Global Capital Confidence Barometer 21st edition   (EY)
•   Power transactions and trends Q2 2019   (EY)
•   MAPS2018 Keynote address on EY report: Life Sciences 4.0 – Securing value through data-driven platforms   (EY)
•   EY Germany FinTech Landscape   (EY)

PwC / Strategy&

•   Project Management: Improving performance, reducing risk   (PwC)
•   World Economic Forum: The power of analytics for better and faster decisions by Dan DiFilippo   (PwC)
•   Apache Hadoop Summit 2016: The Future of Apache Hadoop an Enterprise Architecture View   (PwC)
•   Turning big data into big revenue   (PwC)
•   Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers 2017   (PwC)
•   PwC’s new Golden Age Index – how well are countries harnessing the power of older workers?   (PwC)
•   PwC’s Global Technology IPO Review — Q1 2015   (PwC)
•   PwC Trends in the workforce   (PwC)
•   18th Annual Global CEO Survey – Technology industry key findings   (PwC)
•   The FDA and industry: A recipe for collaborating in the New Health Economy   (PwC)
•   Making zero-emission trucking a reality   (Strategy&)
•   Sustainability strategies for Oil and Gas   (Strategy&)
•   Driving the sustainability agenda on C-level   (Strategy&)
• The Diversity Imperative: 14th Annual Australian Chief Executive Study   (Strategy&)
•   Creating a Winning Recipe for a Meal Kits Program   (LEK)
•   The 4th Annual New Mobility Study 2019   (LEK)
•   2019 APAC Hospital Priority Study Overview    (LEK)
•   Rail industry cost and revenue sharing (2011)   (LEK)
•   2019 Media and Entertainment Study   (LEK)
•   Navigating a digital-first home furnishings market   (LEK)
•   5 Opportunities in the Nutritional Supplements Industry   (LEK)
•   Infrastructure Victoria – AZ/ZEV International Scan   (LEK)
•   The Rapidly Evolving Landscape of Meal Kits and E-commerce in Food & Beverage   (LEK)
•   Top 8 Insights From the 2018 Beauty, Health & Wellness Survey   (LEK)
•   2018 Brand Owner Packaging Survey   (LEK)
•   2016 Strategic Hospital Priorities Study   (LEK)
•   The Merchandising Evolution (and why NDC Matters)   (LEK)
•   Infrastructure beyond COVID-19   (LEK)
•   China Exit or Co-Investment Opportunities for German PE Investors   (LEK)
•   Strategy Study 2014   ( AT Kearney)
•   Australia: Taking Bigger Steps   ( AT Kearney)
•   Lifting the Barriers to Retail Innovation in ASEAN   ( AT Kearney)
•   The Future of Commercial Vehicle Powertrains (2012)   ( AT Kearney)
•   A.T. Kearney 2017 State of Logistics Report: Accelerating into Uncertainty   ( AT Kearney)
•   Pursuing Customer Inspired Growth   ( AT Kearney)
•   The Accelerating Growth of Frictionless Commerce   ( AT Kearney)
•   Consolidation of the US Banking Industry   ( AT Kearney)
• Covid-19 and Effects on Turkey   ( AT Kearney)

Booz Allen Hamilton, Alvarez & Marsal and others

•   European Distressed Credit Watch List   (Alvarez & Marsal)
•   Corporate Headquarters Study 2018   (Roland Berger)
• The Lithium-Ion (EV) battery market and supply chain   (Roland Berger)
•   IP Theft   (Booz Allen Hamilton)
•   Booz Allen Hamilton and Market Connections: C4ISR Survey Report   (Booz Allen Hamilton)
•   Joining Forces: Interagency Collaboration and “Smart Power”   (Booz Allen Hamilton)
• Booz Allen at a glance   (Booz Allen Hamilton)
• Investor Presentation Deck   (Booz Allen Hamilton)
•   Responding to Covid-19 (2021)   (Oliver Wyman)
•   C ovid-19 Special Primer (2020)   (Oliver Wyman)
• Building Up Immunity of the Financial Sector   (Oliver Wyman)
• Customer Experience: The 14BN Risk Noted for Discussion   (Oliver Wyman)

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Reshaping NYCHA support functions

Good:  Realistic client presentation, clear slide structure, complete storyline

Not Good:  Outdated, long and dense

Download this Presentation

Loose dogs in Dallas: Strategic Recommendations to Improve Public Safety and Animal Welfare

Good: Realistic client presentation, clear slide structure, insightful and clear charts

Not Good: Outdated, long and dense

Melbourne as a Global Cultural Destination

Good: Realistic client presentation, good structure, slides “guide” audience to insights

Not Good: Outdated design

The Open Education Resources ecosystem

Good: Clearly structured slides, good visuals, good illustrative charts

Not Good: Relatively short, slightly older, incomplete storyline

The True-Luxury Global Consumer Insight (7th Edition)

Good: Recent presentation, nice looking visuals, clear charts

Not Good: Not a client presentation, too much focus on design

Evaluating NYC media sector development and setting the stage for future growth

Good: Complete presentation (intro, exec. summary, etc.), good examples of subtitles

Not Good: Lacks clear recommendations

The Electric Car Tipping Point

Good: Clear and insightful charts, clutter-free slides, good titles

Not Good: Relatively short, not a client presentation

Projecting US Mail volumes to 2020

Good: Easy to understand, good insights and analysis, contrasts with McKinsey presentation on the same topic

Not Good: Old presentation

Next Generation Manufacturing (2016)

Good: Nice clean design, excellent visuals

Not Good: Not a client deliverable

Corporate Ventures in Sweden (2016)

Good: Strong overall flow, good visualization s

Not Good: Relatively short

Port of Los Angeles Clean Truck Program – March 2008

Good: Realistic slides and presentation, good structure

Not Good: Short

USPS Future Business Model

Good:  Clear structure and analysis, insightful charts

Not Good:  Outdated, lackluster design

Investment and Industrial Policy: A Perspective on the Future

Good: Variety of charts, good titles

Not Good: Over designed, not a client presentation

Outperformers: High-growth emerging economies and the companies that propel them

Good: Variety of charts, qualitative visuals, clear titles

Not Good: Poor use of color, minimal footnotes

Technology’s role in mineral criticality (World Materials Forum)

Good: Clear storyline, well-structured slides, good titles and subtitles

Not Good: Overuse of visuals, relatively short

Challenges in Mining: Scarcity or Opportunity?

Good: Complex explanations made simple, variety of visual types

Not Good: Inconsistent titles, some unprofessional visuals (clipart, etc.)

Modelling the potential of digitally-enabled processes, transparency and participation in the NHS

Good: Realistic client slides, data heavy

Not Good: Cluttered, incomplete storyline

Addressing the Global Affordable Housing Challenge (2016)

Good: Realistic slide structure, good charts, great slide titles

Not Good: Strange slide formatting, mediocre design

Capturing the Full Electrical Efficiency Potential of the UK (2012)

Good: Realistic client deliverable (full deck, dense slides, proper deck structure)

Digital Luxury Experience (2017)

Good: Variety of charts, good use of icons

Not Good: Short presentation, light on content, not a client deliverable

How Companies can Capture the Veteran Opportunity

Good: Examples of text-heavy slides, good action titles

Not Good: Minimal charts, unrealistic structure, repetitive slides

Insurance Trends and Growth Opportunities for Poland

Good: Well organized presentation, clear takeaways

Not Good: Old formatting, short presentation

Laying the Foundations for a Financially Sound Industry

Good: Multiple chart examples (waterfall, line, dot, column)

Not Good: Short presentation, “conference-style” presentation

From Poverty to Empowerment (2014)

Good: Good variety of data visualizations

Not Good: Unattractive formatting and style

Consumer privacy in retail

Good: Clear titles, good use of icons and color to show insights

Not Good: Short, not a client presentation

TMT Outlook 2017: A new wave of advances offer opportunities and challenges

Good: Survey insights highlighted well, good use of color, clear charts and visuals

Not Good: Not a client presentation, heavy focus on survey data

Deloitte SEA CFO Forum Southeast Asia Business Outlook

Good: Line chart examples

Not Good: Poor titles, strange use of black

Deloitte Kenya Budget 2022/23 Webinar

Good: Consistent design, good colors

Not Good: Simple titles, meant for live presentation

The Shopping Centre Handbook 4.0

Good: Some insights

Not Good: Too many graphics, strange design

2011 China Luxury Market Study

Good: Clear titles, good use of color to highlight insights

Not Good: Short presentation, marketing presentation

Bain & UC Berkley Operational Excellence (2010)

Good: Realistic presentation, lots of slides

Not Good: Outdated content, ugly design

Fintech New York: Partnerships, Platforms and Open Innovation

Good: Simple and clear slide design, good structure, insightful charts

Not Good: Short presentation, only a few “consulting style” slides

Shaping the Sustainable Organization

Good: Well structured slides, clear takeaways

Not Good: Rounded chart bars

The Decade to Deliver: A Call to Business Action

Good: Variety of charts, good design

Not Good: Not a client presentation

Fueling the Energy Future

Good: Illustrative charts and matrices

Not Good: Curved line charts

Cracking the Code on Consumer Fraud

Good: Mix of charts and numbers

Right Cloud Mindset: Survey Results Hospitality

Good: Nice slide titles and charts

Not Good: Text heavy sections

Unleashing Competitiveness on the Cloud Continuum

Good: Focus on takeaways, clear charts

Not Good: Ugly backgrounds, overuse of pictures

Whole Brain Leadership: New Rules of Engagement for the C-Suite

Good: Formatting, use of numbers

Not Good: Unnecessary graphics

Federal Technology Vision 2021: Full U.S. Federal Survey Findings

Good: Clear survey results, nice bar charts

Accenture Consumer Behavior Research: The value shake-up

Good: Color design, focus on insights

Not Good: Marketing focused

Tech Adoption and Strategy for Innovation & Growth

Good: Color contrast, text structure

Not Good: 3D charts

Intelligent Operations for Future-Ready Businesses

Good: Sankey chart, tables, presentation structure

When, Where & How AI Will Boost Federal Workforce Productivity

How fit is your allocation strategy?

Good: Some good charts, good use of color

Not Good: Light on content, short presentation, inconsistent slide structure

European Banking Barometer (2015)

Good: Nice titles and takeaways, good variety of charts

Not Good: Survey-focused presentation (i.e. not client deliverable)

EY Price Point: global oil and gas market outlook, Q2 | April 2022

Good: Insightful charts and tables

Not Good: Report style, text heavy

IBOR transition: Opportunities and challenges for the asset management industry

Good: Formatting

Not Good: Meant for live presentation

Global Capital Confidence Barometer 21st edition

Good: Formatting and structure, interesting charts

Power transactions and trends Q2 2019

Good: Insightful charts

Not Good: Meant as appendix or “leave behind”

MAPS2018 Keynote address on EY report: Life Sciences 4.0 – Securing value through data-driven platforms

Good: Realistic slides, clear titles, good formatting

EY Germany FinTech Landscape

Good: Formatting and structure, insightful charts

Not Good: Data heavy, appendix style slides

Project Management: Improving performance, reducing risk

Good: Variety of qualitative visuals, good use of icons, nice design

Not Good: B ad titles, light on content

World Economic Forum: The power of analytics for better and faster decisions by Dan DiFilippo

Good: Scatter plot examples

Apache Hadoop Summit 2016: The Future of Apache Hadoop an Enterprise Architecture View

Good: Qualtative visuals

Not Good: Short and marketing focused

Turning big data into big revenue

Good: Text heavy slide examples

Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers 2017

PwC’s new Golden Age Index – how well are countries harnessing the power of older workers?

Good: Mix of charts and tables, clean formatting

Not Good: Inconsistent titles

PwC’s Global Technology IPO Review — Q1 2015

Good: Combination and column charts

Not Good: Report style presentation

18th Annual Global CEO Survey – Technology industry key findings

Good: Visualized data

Not Good: Incomplete titles

The FDA and industry: A recipe for collaborating in the New Health Economy

Good: Simple and clear titles

Not Good: Inconsistent structure

Making zero-emission trucking a reality

Good: Very realistic slides, overall great presentation

Not Good: Text heavy transition slides

Driving the sustainability agenda on C-level

Not Good: Short, some cluttered slides

The Diversity Imperative: 14th Annual Australian Chief Executive Study

Good: Chart heavy, realistic slides

Not Good: Short presentation

Creating a Winning Recipe for a Meal Kits Program

Good: Clear titles, good charts

Not Good: Dense, too many pictures/logos

The 4th Annual New Mobility Study 2019

Good: Variety of charts, good amount of content

Not Good: Lots of filler slides, inconsistent titles

2019 APAC Hospital Priority Study Overview

Good: Very good (and realistic) design, clear slide takeaways

Not Good: Very short presentation

Rail industry cost and revenue sharing (2011)

Good: Good introduction and executive summary, realistic client presentation

Not Good: Outdated, boring design

2019 Media and Entertainment Study

Good: Clear charts, good titles

Not Good: Very short, too much text

Navigating a digital-first home furnishings market

Good: Infographic style slides

5 Opportunities in the Nutritional Supplements Industry

Good: Great charts, good deck structure

Not Good: Not a client presentation, text heavy

Infrastructure Victoria – AZ/ZEV International Scan

Good: Realistic client presentation, wide variety of slides

Not Good: Very long

The Rapidly Evolving Landscape of Meal Kits and E-commerce in Food & Beverage

Good: Variety of basic charts, realistic design

Top 8 Insights From the 2018 Beauty, Health & Wellness Survey

Good: Good column chart examples

Not Good: Report style

2018 Brand Owner Packaging Survey

Good: Good visuals, multiple charts

2016 Strategic Hospital Priorities Study

Good: Multiple charts, good qualitative visuals

The Merchandising Evolution (and why NDC Matters)

Good: Good storyline, clear charts

Not Good: Weak titles, outdated style

Infrastructure beyond COVID-19

Good: Wide variety of slide types, realistic presentation

China Exit or Co-Investment Opportunities for German PE Investors

Good: Multiple data heavy slides, good charts

Not Good: Slightly old

Strategy Study 2014

Good: Variety of charts

Not Good: Reads like an infographic, poor choice of color

Australia: Taking Bigger Steps

Good: Illustrative chart, use of icons

Not Good: D istracting backgrounds and colors

Lifting the Barriers to Retail Innovation in ASEAN

Good: Simple to follow

Not Good: Minimal analysis, questionable stacked column chart

The Future of Commercial Vehicle Powertrains (2012)

Good: Realistic slides, excellent takeaways, good overall structure

Not Good: Older presentation, simplistic design

Pursuing Customer Inspired Growth

Good:  Realistic client slides, multiple frameworks

Not Good: Short, outdated design

The Accelerating Growth of Frictionless Commerce

Good: Mix of charts, clear insights

Not Good: Distracting backgrounds, short presentation

Consolidation of the US Banking Industry

Good: A couple good titles

Not Good: Large text, minimal charts, distracting colors

Covid-19 and Effects on Turkey

Good: Consistent color, focus on insights

Not Good: Strange layout, marketing focused

Booz Allen Hamilton, Alvarez & Marsal and others

European Distressed Credit Watch List

Good: Simple charts

Not Good: Boring template, appendix heavy

Corporate Headquarters Study 2018

Good: Clear and simple slides, good variety of charts and visuals, not overly produced

Not Good: Not a typical client presentation, average slide titles

The Lithium-Ion (EV) battery market and supply chain

Good: Realistic titles and content-heavy slides

Not Good: Distracting background and colors

Good: Story flow, titles

Not Good: T itle page, overall design rs

Booz Allen Hamilton and Market Connections: C4ISR Survey Report

Good: Simple bar charts

Not Good: Titles, design

Joining Forces: Interagency Collaboration and “Smart Power”

Good: Slide consistency

Not Good: Chart design, outdated

Booz Allen at a glance

Good: Easy-to-read charts

Not Good: Meant for live presentation, minimal content

Responding to Covid-19 (2021)

Good: Excellent use of color, good overall design and visualizations

Not Good: “White Paper” style presentation (i.e. not client deliverable)

Covid-19 Special Primer (2020)

Good: Variety of data visualizations, nice color usage, clear takeaways

Building Up Immunity of the Financial Sector

Good: Clean design, interesting charts

Not Good: Some text heavy slides

Customer Experience: The 14BN Risk Noted for Discussion

Good: Simple design, good overall structure

Not Good: Inconsistent colors

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Database of 34+ Downloadable McKinsey Presentations

Table of contents.

It’s great to learn the techniques that strategy consulting firms like McKinsey & Co use to build compelling slide decks (e.g. executive summaries , the Pyramid Principle ,  action titles , etc.)

But sometimes you just want to see McKinsey presentations to see how those techniques are applied in the real world.

The problem is that it’s quite hard to find good-quality McKinsey presentations. Most of them are commercial in confidence and, even if they’re not, they’re scattered all over the web.

You can download the full set of McKinsey presentations (plus an additional 100+ presentations from BCG, Bain & Co, Kearney, Oliver Wyman, L.E.K, and more) using this form:

Download 120+ strategy consulting presentations for free

Looking for slide inspiration? Download 120+ consulting slide decks from top strategy consulting firms, such as McKinsey, BCG and Bain!

Or if you’d rather download the McKinsey presentations individually, you’ll find a list for you to download below:

Downloadable McKinsey Presentations & Slide Decks

• McKinsey – USPS Future Business Model (2010)
• McKinsey – Addressing the Global Affordable Housing Challenge (2016)
• McKinsey – The Internet of Things and Big Data (2013)
• McKinsey – Challenges in Mining: Scarcity or Opportunity? (2015)
• McKinsey – Digital Luxury Experience (2017)
• McKinsey – European Banking Summit (2018)
• McKinsey – Context for Global Growth and Development (2014)
• McKinsey – Outperformers: High Growth Emerging Economies (2018)
• McKinsey – Insurance Trends and Growth Opportunities for Poland (2015)
• McKinsey – Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions (2017)
• McKinsey – Current Perspectives on Medical Affairs in Japan (2018)
• McKinsey – Digitally-Enabled Processes in the NHS (2014)
• McKinsey – From Poverty to Empowerment (2014)
• McKinsey – What Makes Private Sector Partnerships Work (2011)
• McKinsey – Reinventing Construction (2017)
• McKinsey – Laying the Foundations for a Financially Sound Industry (2013)
• McKinsey – Technology’s Role in Mineral Criticality (2017)
• McKinsey – Capturing the Full Electrical Efficiency Potential of the UK (2012)
• McKinsey – How Companies can Capture the Veteran Opportunity (2012)
• McKinsey – Investment and Industrial Policy (2018)
• McKinsey – Moving Laggards to Early Adopters (2019)
• McKinsey – Helping Global Health Partnerships to increase their impact (2009)
• McKinsey – The changed agenda in the global sourcing industry (2009)
• McKinsey – Attracting Responsible Mining Investment in Fragile and Conflict Affected Settings (2014)
• McKinsey – Using Artificial Intelligence to prevent healthcare errors from occurring (2017)
• McKinsey – Refueling the innovation engine in vaccines (2016)

If you’d like to download more consulting decks from BCG, Bain, L.E.K Consulting, Oliver Wyman, Kearney and more, then check out our free database of 71+ downloadable consulting presentations .

Connect with us

McKinsey-style business presentations

Grow a business.

• Flat Design
• Minimalist Design
• Colorful, Bright, and Bold Design
• Infographic-Style Slides in Presentations
• Bold Typography Design

Presentation skills are essential to success in any business. This article explains how to structure a McKinsey-style business presentation, step by step, from a single slide to a complete deck. We discuss how to prepare… ... read more Presentation skills are essential to success in any business. This article explains how to structure a McKinsey-style business presentation, step by step, from a single slide to a complete deck. We discuss how to prepare for a presentation, how to structure the material, and how to deliver the presentation. close

What can we learn about presentations from the most successful management consulting companies like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain?

Prezlab has had the privilege of working with some of the best management consulting firms in the region and has helped a slew of consultants and consulting companies with their presentations. We thought it would be a great idea to jot down what the most successful management consulting companies such as McKinsey, BCG, and Bain do in their presentations to make them such a success. Their presentations are elegant, articulate, well-organized, engaging, and pack a mighty punch.

Great consultants are problem-solvers. In our opinion, this is a must for consultants. When this ability is coupled with the ability to design a great presentation, that’s when the magic happens. Because with the power of effective communication and delivery, they can change minds and convince their audience that their solutions are the most effective. Unfortunately, a lot of management consultants lack this ability. This blog is meant to bring you a little closer to becoming an effective communicator of solutions via presentation design .

Think of a great presentation like a movie; storytelling is the most central aspect. The idea of your presentation as a management consultant is to present and unpack complex ideas in the most simplified and easy-to-understand manner. Apart from storytelling, the other aspects of your presentation would be data and analysis. All of these elements should work in unison and be coherent with each other to make one singular point, the solution. If you want to learn more about this aspect of a presentation then read our blog: Effective remedies to dull and boring presentations .

Before you start, ask yourself the following questions:

01 Who is my target audience and what is their level of understanding of the problems?

02 How long should your presentation be?

03 How much time would your audience like to spend on your presentation?

04 What do they care about?

05 What action would you like them to take after your presentation?

The typical elements of a management consulting presentation

1 – executive summary.

The executive summary is a situational summary of the problem at hand and the gist of your presentation. This is mostly written for top management who don’t have the time to go through the entire presentation and just want a powerful summary.

2 – Table of Content

A table of content helps spark interest and give your audience an idea of what is to come. This is usually shown right at the beginning before you begin presenting your material.

3 – Action Title

The action title is your single point or key idea that you will be proposing in the rest of the presentation. Every point you introduce should connect back to the action title.

4 – Chapters and Body of Slides

The chapters and body of slides are the slides that conform to the narrative. You can split the presentation into chapters to break it into more palatable sections. Use the slides to present your story backed by the data and analysis.

5 – Conclusion and recommendations

The conclusion reinforces and reiterates your final point or your solution. This section summarizes all your main ideas and condenses them into a central theme.

One aspect that makes sides from McKinsey and other top management consulting firms stand out is the use of engaging visuals that go side by side with the data being presented in the slides.

Another aspect of McKinsey slides is the constant and conscious attempt to keep the number of slides to as few as possible. This default instinct is to present as much data as possible. The false impression that most management consultants have is that if they say more, they have a better chance of winning their audience over.

Nothing can be further away from the truth. Once you start thinking this way you would be surprised how you can chop down 20 slides to 2 slides without losing any real impact. Presentation formats such as the PechaKucha or Guy Kawasaki methods limit their slides to a certain number and work within that specific parameter to tell a story.

McKinsey consultancy slides also do not use a lot of bullet points – it is a surefire way of losing your audience’s interest. Studies have shown that people are more likely to remember information presented as images and pictures rather than bullet points. Steve Jobs, one of the greatest presenters of all time, never used bullets in any of his presentations, and we wrote a blog on  5 Presentation Lessons You Can Learn from Steve Jobs  if you are interested in learning more .

Key features from McKinsey slides worth keeping in mind:

01 Choose a professional font like Arial or any other professional font

02 Keep colors to a minimum and keep the color scheme consistent across all the slides

03 Highlight the key points

04 Avoid clutter, give your slides enough breathing space

05 Ensure proper and correct alignment

06 Have a “source” section at the bottom of each slide

07 No fancy graphics or animations

And most importantly: make sure each side has an action title that encapsulates the key idea of that slide in a one-liner (maximum two sentences). The idea is that if someone reads just the action titles of each slide, they should get the gist of your presentation.

If you want to see some of McKinsey’s presentations in action then check out the links below:

Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation

Reinventing Construction

Laying the foundations for a financially sound industry

If you would like to get your McKinsey-style slides designed by Prezlab, get in touch with us .

Let us design your presentation!

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Home Blog Business Business Presentation: The Ultimate Guide to Making Powerful Presentations (+ Examples)

Business Presentation: The Ultimate Guide to Making Powerful Presentations (+ Examples)

A business presentation is a purpose-led summary of key information about your company’s plans, products, or practices, designed for either internal or external audiences. Project proposals, HR policy presentations, investors briefings are among the few common types of presentations. 

Compelling business presentations are key to communicating important ideas, persuading others, and introducing new offerings to the world. Hence, why business presentation design is one of the most universal skills for any professional. 

This guide teaches you how to design and deliver excellent business presentations. Plus, breaks down some best practices from business presentation examples by popular companies like Google, Pinterest, and Amazon among others! 

3 General Types of Business Presentations

A business presentation can be given for a number of reasons. Respectively, they differ a lot in terms of content and purpose. 

But overall, all types of business presentations can be classified as:

• Informative
• Persuasive 
• Supporting 

Informative Business Presentation 

As the name suggests, the purpose of an informative presentation is to discern the knowledge you have — explain what you know. It’s the most common type of business presentation out there. So you have probably prepared such at least several times. 

Examples of informative presentations:

• Team briefings presentation 
• Annual stakeholder report 
• Quarterly business reviews
• Business portfolio presentation
• Business plan presentation
• Project presentation

Helpful templates from SlideModel:

• Business plan PowerPoint template
• Business review PowerPoint template
• Project proposal PowerPoint template
• Corporate annual report template

Persuasive Business Presentation 

The goal of this type of presentation is to persuade your audience of your point of view — convince them of what you believe is right. Developing business presentations of this caliber requires a bit more copywriting mastery, as well as expertise in public speaking . Unlike an informative business presentation, your goal here is to sway the audience’s opinions and prompt them towards the desired action. 

Examples of persuasive presentations:

• Pitch deck/investor presentations
• Sales presentation  
• Business case presentation 
• Free business proposal presentation
• Business proposal PowerPoint template
• Pitch deck PowerPoint template
• Account Plan PowerPoint template

Supporting Business Presentation 

This category of business PowerPoint presentations is meant to facilitate decision-making — explain how we can get something done. The underlying purpose here is to communicate the general “action plan”. Then break down the necessary next steps for bringing it to life. 

Examples of supporting presentations:

• Roadmap presentation
• Project vision presentation 
• After Action Review presentation 
• Standard operating procedure (SOP) PowerPoint template 
• Strategy map PowerPoint template 
• After action review (ARR) PowerPoint template 

What Should Be Included in a Business Presentation?

Overall, the content of your business presentation will differ depending on its purpose and type. However, at the very minimum, all business presentations should include:

• Introductory slide 
• Agenda/purpose slide
• Main information or Content slides
• Key Takeaways slides
• Call-to-action/next steps slides

We further distill business presentation design and writing best practices in the next section (plus, provide several actionable business PowerPoint presentation examples!). 

How to Make a Business Presentation: Actionable Tips

A business presentation consists of two parts — a slide deck and a verbal speech. In this section, we provide tips and strategies for nailing your deck design. 

1. Get Your Presentation Opening Right 

The first slides of your presentation make or break your success. Why? By failing to frame the narrative and set the scene for the audience from the very beginning, you will struggle to keep their interest throughout the presentation. 

You have several ways of how to start a business presentation:

• Use a general informative opening — a summative slide, sharing the agenda and main points of the discussion. 
• Go for a story opening — a more creative, personal opening, aimed at pulling the audience into your story. 
• Try a dramatic opening — a less apparent and attention-grabbing opening technique, meant to pique the audience’s interest. 

Standard Informative Opening 

Most business presentation examples you see start with a general, informative slide such as an Agenda, Problem Statement, or Company Introduction. That’s the “classic” approach. 

To manage the audience’s expectations and prepare them for what’s coming next, you can open your presentation with one or two slides stating:

• The topic of your presentation — a one-sentence overview is enough. 
• Persuasive hook, suggesting what’s in it for the audience and why they should pay attention. 
• Your authority — the best technique to establish your credibility in a business presentation is to share your qualifications and experience upfront to highlight why you are worth listening to. 

Opening best suited for: Formal business presentations such as annual reports and supporting presentations to your team/business stakeholders. 

Story Opening 

Did you ever notice that most TED talks start with a quick personal story? The benefit of this presenting technique is that it enables speakers to establish quick rapport and hold the listener’s attention. 

Here’s how Nancy Duarte, author of “Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations” book and TED presenter, recommends opening a presentation: 

You know, here’s the status quo, here’s what’s going on. And then you need to compare that to what could be. You need to make that gap as big as possible, because there is this commonplace of the status quo, and you need to contrast that with the loftiness of your idea. 

Storytelling , like no other tool, helps transpose the audience into the right mindset and get concentrated on the subject you are about to discuss. A story also elicits emotions, which can be a powerful ally when giving persuasive presentations. In the article how to start a presentation , we explore this in more detail.

Opening best suited for: Personal and business pitches, sales presentations, other types of persuasive presentations. 

Dramatic Opening 

Another common technique is opening your presentation with a major statement, sometimes of controversial nature. This can be a shocking statistic, complex rhetoric question, or even a provocative, contrarian statement, challenging the audience’s beliefs. 

Using a dramatic opening helps secure the people’s attention and capture their interest. You can then use storytelling to further drill down your main ideas. 

If you are an experienced public speaker, you can also strengthen your speech with some unexpected actions. That’s what Bill Gates does when giving presentations. In a now-iconic 2009 TED talk about malaria, mid-presentation Gates suddenly reveals that he actually brought a bunch of mosquitoes with him. He cracks open a jar with non-malaria-infected critters to the audience’s surprise. His dramatic actions, paired with a passionate speech made a mighty impression. 

Opening best suited for: Marketing presentations, customer demos, training presentations, public speeches. 

Further reading: How to start a presentation: tips and examples. 

2. Get Your PowerPoint Design Right

Surely, using professional business PowerPoint templates already helps immensely with presentation deck design since you don’t need to fuss over slide layout, font selection, or iconography. 

Even so, you’ll still need to customize your template(s) to make them on brand and better suited to the presentation you’re about to deliver. Below are our best presentation design tips to give your deck an extra oomph. 

Use Images, Instead of Bullet Points 

If you have ever watched Steve Jobs’s presentations, you may have noticed that he never used bullet-point lists. Weird right? Because using bullet points is the most universal advice in presentation design. 

But there’s a valid scientific reason why Jobs favored images over bullet-point texts. Researchers found that information delivered in visuals is better retained than words alone. This is called the “ pictorial superiority effect ”. As John Medina, a molecular biologist, further explains :

“Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.”

So if your goal is to improve the memorability of your presentation, always replace texts with images and visualizations when it makes sense. 

Fewer Slides is Better

No matter the value, a long PowerPoint presentation becomes tiring at some point. People lose focus and stop retaining the information. Thus, always take some extra time to trim the fluff and consolidate some repetitive ideas within your presentation. 

For instance, at McKinsey new management consultants are trained to cut down the number of slides in client presentations. In fact, one senior partner insists on replacing every 20 slides with only two slides . Doing so prompts you to focus on the gist — the main business presentation ideas you need to communicate and drop filler statements. 

Here are several quick tips to shorten your slides:

• Use a three-arc structure featuring a clear beginning (setup), main narrative (confrontation), ending (resolution). Drop the ideas that don’t fit into either of these. 
• Write as you tweet. Create short, on-point text blurbs of under 156 symbols, similar to what you’d share on Twitter. 
• Contextualize your numbers. Present any relevant statistics in a context, relevant to the listeners. Turn longer stats into data visualizations for easier cognition. 

Consistency is Key 

In a solid business presentation, each slide feels like part of the connecting story. To achieve such consistency apply the same visual style and retain the same underlying message throughout your entire presentation.

Use the same typography, color scheme, and visual styles across the deck. But when you need to accentuate a transition to a new topic (e.g. move from a setup to articulating the main ideas), add some new visual element to signify the slight change in the narrative. 

Further reading: 23 PowerPoint Presentation Tips for Creating Engaging and Interactive Presentations

3. Make Your Closure Memorable 

We best remember the information shared last. So make those business presentation takeaways stick in the audience’s memory. We have three strategies for that. 

Use the Rule of Three 

The Rule of Three is a literary concept, suggesting that we best remember and like ideas and concepts when they are presented in threes. 

Many famous authors and speakers use this technique:

• “Duty – Honor – Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, and what you will be” . Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
• “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” are the unalienable rights of all humans that governments are meant to protect.” Thomas Jefferson 

The Rule of Three works because three is the maximum number of items most people can remember on their first attempt. Likewise, such pairings create a short, familiar structure that is easy to remember for our brains. 

Try the Title Close Technique

Another popular presentation closing technique is “Title Close” — going back to the beginning of your narrative and reiterating your main idea (title) in a form of a takeaway. Doing so helps the audience better retain your core message since it’s repeated at least two times. Plus, it brings a sense of closure — a feel-good state our brains love. Also, a brief one-line closure is more memorable than a lengthy summary and thus better retained. 

Ask a Question 

If you want to keep the conversation going once you are done presenting, you can conclude your presentation with a general question you’d like the audience to answer.

Alternatively, you can also encourage the members to pose questions to you. The latter is better suited for informational presentations where you’d like to further discuss some of the matters and secure immediate feedback. 

Try adding an interactive element like a QR code closing your presentation with a QR code and having a clear CTA helps you leverage the power of sharing anything you would like to share with your clients. QR codes can be customized to look alike your brand.

If you are looking for a smoother experience creating presentations on the fly, check out the AI PowerPoint maker —it offers everything you can ask forfrom presentation design in a couple of clicks.

12 Business Presentation Examples and What Makes Them Great 

Now that we equipped you with the general knowledge on how to make a presentation for business, let’s take a look at how other presenters are coping with this job and what lessons you can take away from them. 

1. N26 Digital Bank Pitch Deck 

This is a fine business pitch presentation example, hitting all the best practices. The deck opens with a big shocking statement that most Millennials would rather go to the dentist than step into a bank branch. 

Then it proceeds to discuss the company’s solution to the above — a fully digital bank with a paperless account opening process, done in 8 minutes. After communicating the main product features and value proposition, the deck further conceptualizes what traction the product got so far using data visualizations. The only thing it lacks is a solid call-to-action for closing slides as the current ending feels a bit abrupt. 

2. WeWork Pitch Deck

For a Series D round, WeWork went with a more formal business presentation. It starts with laying down the general company information and then transitions to explaining their business model, current market conditions, and the company’s position on the market.

The good thing about this deck is that they quantify their business growth prospects and value proposition. The likely gains for investors are shown in concrete numbers. However, those charts go one after another in a row, so it gets a bit challenging to retain all data points. 

The last part of their presentation is focused on a new offering, “We Live”. It explains why the team seeks funds to bring it to life. Likewise, they back their reasoning with market size statistics, sample projects, and a five-year revenue forecast. 

3. Redfin Investor Presentation 

If you are looking for a “text-light” business presentation example, Redfin’s investor deck is up to your alley. This simple deck expertly uses iconography, charts, and graphs to break down the company’s business model, value proposition, market share, and competitive advantages over similar startups. For number-oriented investors, this is a great deck design to use. 

4. Google Ready Together Presentation 

This isn’t quite the standard business presentation example per se. But rather an innovative way to create engaging, interactive presentations of customer case studies .

The short deck features a short video clip from a Google client, 7-11, explaining how they used the company’s marketing technology to digitally transform their operations and introduce a greater degree of marketing automation . The narrated video parts are interrupted by slides featuring catchy stats, contextualizing issues other businesses are facing. Then transitions to explaining through the words of 7-11 CMO, how Google’s technology is helping them overcome the stated shortcomings.

5. Salesforce Business Presentation Example 

This is a great example of an informational presentation, made by the Salesforce team to share their research on customer experience (CX) with prospects and existing customers.

The slide deck errs on the lengthier side with 58 slides total. But bigger topics are broken down and reinforced through bite-sized statistics and quotes from the company leadership. They are also packaging the main tips into memorable formulas, itemized lists, and tables. Overall, this deck is a great example of how you can build a compelling narrative using different statistics. 

6. Mastercard Business Presentation

This slide deck from Mastercard instantly captures the audience’s attention with unusual background images and major data points on the growth of populations, POS systems, and payment methods used in the upcoming decade.

Perhaps to offset the complexity of the subject, Mastercard chose to sprinkle in some humor in presentation texts and used comic-style visuals to supplement that. However, all their animations are made in a similar style, creating a good sense of continuity in design. They are also using colors to signify the transition from one part of the presentation to another. 

In the second part, the slide deck focuses on distilling the core message of what businesses need to do to remain competitive in the new payments landscape. The team presents what they have been working on to expand the payment ecosystem. Then concludes with a “title close” styled call-to-action, mirroring the presentation title.

7. McKinsey Diversity & Inclusion Presentation 

This fresh business slide deck from McKinsey is a great reference point for making persuasive business presentations on complex topics such as D&I. First, it recaps the main definitions of the discussed concepts — diversity, equity, and inclusion — to ensure alignment with the audience members. 

Next, the business presentation deck focuses on the severity and importance of the issue for businesses, represented through a series of graphs and charts. After articulating the “why”, the narrative switches to “how” — how leaders can benefit from investment in D&I. The main points are further backed with data and illustrated via examples. 

8. Accenture Presentation for the Energy Sector

Similar to McKinsey, Accenture keeps its slide deck on a short. Yet the team packs a punch within each slide through using a mix of fonts, graphical elements, and color for highlighting the core information. The presentation copy is on a longer side, prompting the audience to dwell on reading the slides. But perhaps this was meant by design as the presentation was also distributed online — via the company blog and social media. 

The last several slides of the presentation deck focus on articulating the value Accenture can deliver for their clients in the Energy sector. They expertly break down their main value proposition and key service lines, plus quantify the benefits. 

9. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Technical Presentation 

Giving an engaging technical presentation isn’t an easy task. You have to balance the number of details you reveal on your slides to prevent overwhelm, while also making sure that you don’t leave out any crucial deets. This technical presentation from AWS does great in both departments. 

First, you get entertained with a quick overview of Amazon’s progress in machine learning (ML) forecasting capabilities over the last decade. Then introduced to the main tech offering. The deck further explains what you need to get started with Amazon Forecast — e.g. dataset requirements, supported forecasting scenarios, available forecasting models, etc. 

The second half of the presentation provides a quick training snippet on configuring Amazon SageMaker to start your first project. The step-by-step instructions are coherent and well-organized, making the reader excited to test-drive the product. 

10. Snapchat Company Presentation

Snapchat’s business model presentation is on a funkier, more casual side, reflective of the company’s overall brand and positioning. After briefly recapping what they do, the slide deck switches to discussing the company’s financials and revenue streams.

This business slide deck by Snap Inc. itself is rather simplistic and lacks fancy design elements. But it has a strong unified theme of showing the audience Snapchat’s position on the market and projected vector of business development. 

11. Visa Business Acquisition Presentation 

If you are working on a business plan or M&A presentation for stakeholders of your own, this example from Visa will be helpful. The presentation deck expertly breaks down the company’s rationale for purchasing Plaid and subsequent plans for integrating the startup into their business ecosystem. 

The business deck recaps why the Plaid acquisition is a solid strategic decision by highlighting the total addressable market they could dive into post-deal. Then it details Plaid’s competitive strengths. The slide deck then sums up all the monetary and indirect gains Visa could reap as an acquirer. 

12. Pinterest Earnings Report Presentation 

Annual reports and especially earnings presentations might not be the most exciting types of documents to work on, but they have immense strategic value. Hence, there’s little room for ambiguities or mistakes. 

In twelve slides, this business presentation from Pinterest clearly communicates the big picture of the company’s finance in 2021. All the key numbers are represented as featured quotes in the sidebar with diagrams further showcasing the earning and spending dynamics. Overall, the data is easy to interpret even for non-finance folks. 

To Conclude 

With these business presentation design tips, presentation templates , and examples, you can go from overwhelmed to confident about your next presentation design in a matter of hours. Focus on creating a rough draft first using a template. Then work on nailing your opening slide sequence and shortening the texts in the main part of your presentation when needed. Make sure that each slide serves a clear purpose and communicates important details. To make your business presentation deck more concise, remove anything that does not pertain to the topic. 

Finally, once you are done, share your business presentation with other team members to get their feedback and reiterate the final design.

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Business Presentations, Corporate Presentations, Design, Design Inspiration, Examples, Executive Reports, Inspiration, Presentation Ideas Filed under Business

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The Advanced Guide to McKinsey-style Business Presentations

Introduction to business presentations, why we wrote this guide.

350 PowerPoint presentations are given per second. The vast majority of them suck.

They are too long, too dull, too full of useless detail, too generic. And these bad powerpoint presentations matter a lot.

They are how we represent ourselves and our work to the world, they are the culmination of our analysis and our thinking. They are our value-add.

And they are terrible.

FREE  eBook

Receive a pdf copy of this 10,000-word ' Advanced Guide to McKinsey-style Business Presentations' as part of our Accelerator Kit .

The disturbing challenge for many of us is that 'terrible' simply isn't good enough. Our careers depend on our business presentations not being terrible.

We wrote this guide in the hopes that, in our own way, we can have a disproportionate impact on your success - your success in presenting yourself, your ideas, and your value add. We hope you find this guide useful.

Our goal was to create the most comprehensive online guide to writing McKinsey-style business presentations on the web. At over 10,000 words, we think it is safe to say - job done!

Who is this guide for?

If you need to write a business report, update a team, complete a consulting assignment, or develop an investor pitch deck, and you are not sure where to start, this guide is for you.

If you need to write a senior executive presentation and are struggling to collect your thoughts, then this guide is for you.

If you are looking for tips, tools and resources to create your presentations faster and make them better, you are going to love this guide.

From PowerPoint newbie to strategy consulting veteran, you'll definitely learn something new that you can use to make your presentations sing.

How to use this Guide

Use The Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations in the way that works best for you. We have formatted and structured the Guide to take advantage of the web. You can use it for reference, inspiration, or as a how-to-guide. Be sure to bookmark the guide so that you can reference it in the future.

If you feel that you have a handle on writing business presentations - and just want to learn a new tip or two - then jump to the relevant section of the guide and dive in! We’re sure you'll find some new tricks and tips to add to your arsenal.

If you have a basic grasp of writing business presentations, but are looking to add a layer of depth to your knowledge - then you should read the guide in order.

Here is an overview of each of the chapters in this Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations.

Chapter 1: One of the Most Valuable Business Skills You Can Master

Presentation writing skills are under-rated. They have, in fact, a profound effect on your career success. 

In Chapter 1, we will layout the reasons why developing presentation skills can accelerate career advancement and explore why writing presentations is such a deceptively challenging task. 

We'll also introduce a framework for thinking about the skills one must master to become truly proficient at writing business presentations.

Chapter 2: The Many Schools of Business Presentation Design

There is a lot of conflicting advice out there. And a lot of fantastic presentation styles which one can emulate. In the end, as with much in life, the answer to 'which style should I copy?' or 'which advice should I follow?' is 'it depends'.

In this chapter we expand on the general 'horses for courses' answer. We'll introduce you to a number of alternate schools of presentation design and layout the precise circumstances under which each is powerful. We’ll explain how you select the presentation style and approach that matches your purpose.

This is your one stop shop for understanding the various presentation ‘schools-of-thought’ and for determining which high-level presentation approach you should adopt.

Chapter 3: The Consulting School of Presentation Design

The dirty little secret of presentation writing is that the vast majority of presentations that we write are not presented! At least not in a formal, auditorium kind of way.

This has profound implications on the style of presentation which you should adopt.

In this section we will explore the characteristics of the McKinsey (or consulting in general) style presentation and identify the things it does well and why this style is so useful.

Chapter 4: The Five Disciplines

There are five disciplines one must master to become great at writing killer business presentations. This is the heart of our process and of the SlideHeroes course:

•   The Power of Logical Structure
•   The Art of Storytelling
•   The Science of Fact-based Persuasion
•   The Harmony of Design
•   The Drama of Performance

Chapter 5: The Power of Logical Structure

Your job is to communicate an answer to a question. When the audience cannot follow your answer, when they cannot follow the logical steps that flow through your argument, they become frustrated.

Logical structure helps comprehension.

But sometimes it can be difficult.

In this chapter we will dive deep into several business writing techniques you can use to help structure your presentation.

•   How to group your ideas (the right number and nature; the right level of abstraction)
•   Inductive and deductive arguments
•   The special role your Introduction plays in establishing context and framing the question you will ultimately answer

Chapter 6: The Art of Storytelling

At their heart, all presentations are stories.

Our brains are wired to learn from and remember stories. Presentations that effectively make use of storytelling techniques are easier to understand and remember.

In this chapter we explore the hows and whys of storytelling within business presentations.

Chapter 7: The Science of Fact-based Persuasion

The focus of this chapter is on the need for facts and data, and how to present them.

To better understand how to present facts in the form of data we will start with Edward Tufte and a theory for the visual display of quantitative information.

We will also explore the differences between tables and graphs, and how to know when to use each.

The chapter will conclude with an overview of the standard graphs that are most commonly found in business presentations.

Chapter 8: The Harmony of Design

 How do I make my slides look good?

We get this question a lot. Usually the implicit assumption underlying that question is that it is a PowerPoint (or Keynote) question.

I don’t know how to use this stupid tool to make my slides look good.

In fact, creating good looking slides is, in the main, not a question of PowerPoint skills (it is a basic tool, pretty easy to learn). It is a design question, not an IT question.

And design is a little trickier.

The good news is that the basics of slide design are not difficult to master because, in general, less is more.

This chapter focuses on straight-forward design strategies you can employ to create amazing looking slides. We will also discuss tips and techniques that you can apply to improve the delivery of your presentation.

Chapter 9: The Drama of Performance

One of the things we emphasize strongly at SlideHeroes is the need to focus on the creation of the presentation material - the content, the structure, the story and the data.

But you better believe a presentation is a performance. Delivery matters, even if you are sitting down.

This chapter focuses on the kind of preparation and practice that is required to take a well written deck and deliver a great public speaking performance.

Chapter 10: The Process

At SlideHeroes we have a step-by-step process for applying each of these five disciplines, in the right order, so you can quickly go from a blank sheet of paper to ‘congratulations!’ on a job well done.

This chapter lays out that process for you.

Chapter 11: The Tools

We list a set of recommended tools that you can use to help create a great business presentation.

Chapter 12: Final Thoughts & Next Steps

In the final chapter of the Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations we provide some thoughts on where to go for more help and how the SlideHeroes course builds on the material contained in this Advanced Guide.

Who are we?

This post is the most popular on our site and, as a consequence, a lot of readers discover SlideHeroes for the first time via this Advanced Guide.

So who are we and what do we do?

SlideHeroes provides online, video-based business presentation training .

We help students become top-tier consultants, top performing sales people, superstar analysts and highly successful business professionals.

We help teams improve their corporate communication skills.

In our free course trial, we offer free video lessons that teach:

•   Our full Who, Why, What and How process for creating killer presentations
•   How to identify the key question your presentation must focus on answering
•   How to structure the introduction of your presentation to plant this question in the mind of your audience

FREE  Course Trial

Start improving your presentations skills immediately with our free trail of the Decks for Decision Makers course.

Chapter 1: One of the Most Valuable Business Skills you can Master

The ability to write clear and impactful PowerPoint-based McKinsey presentations is, for young and mid-level professionals, one of the most valuable skills you can master.

Here’s why:

•   PowerPoint (Keynote) is the de facto paradigm for internal corporate communication today
•   The ability to present ideas and results in an understandable and compelling way can be a key differentiator (frankly many people are simply not very good at it)
•   Strong communication skills make professionals more effective - being understood the first time, saves time

The problem many young professionals face is that unless they luck out early in their career and learn the craft of creating business presentations from someone pretty exceptional – they probably suck at it.

Becoming awesome is harder than most people realize

Becoming exceptional at crafting board-level presentations (presentations that kick ass) is tough. Much harder than most people realize.

Most of us initially dismiss the challenge as a PowerPoint formatting challenge - a time consuming technical challenge that should be delegated.

In fact, crafting successful presentations is a multi-disciplinary challenge that requires the mastery of a broad SET of distinct skills:

•   The ability to order ideas in a logical and structured way
•   The skill to utilize words succinctly, powerfully, accurately
•   Numeracy, and the ability to communicate data effectively
•   Taste - the appreciation for and ability to create aesthetically pleasing design
•   Charisma and executive presence

Only some of these 'presentation skills' are taught in schools or formally in organizations. Many from this list are either very challenging to master, or are seen (by many) as simply innate.

‘How to use PowerPoint’ courses do not teach these skills either.

And to master all of them? Well, that is the challenge.

Chapter 2: The Many Schools of Business Presentation Design

There are many, many different 'schools' of presentation style. Different approaches to crafting and delivering a business presentation.

Here are a few to give you a flavor:

The ‘Pecha Kucha’ School

Pecha Kucha is a presentation style in which 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each (six minutes and 40 seconds in total). It is a format designed to keep presentations concise and fast-paced and is often adopted for multiple-speaker events (PechaKucha Nights). PechaKucha Night was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

Here is an example from the author Dan Pink of a Pecha Kucha presentation. Dan briefly explains the format and then goes on to give a Pecha Kucha about a favorite topic of his. It is a pretty good example. Unfortunately Dan messes up the pronunciation of Pecha Kucha (lots of people do). If you are curious as to how to pronounce Pecha Kucha, have a look at this video .

When to use Pecha Kucha

•   Oral ‘stand-up’ presentations only, good for conference presentations
•   When you only have 6 minutes and 40 seconds
•   When a focus on fast-pace, conciseness and entertainment are paramount

The ‘TED Talk’ School

TED Talks are, quite simply, some of the most fascinating talks you will ever hear. The power of the ideas, and the skill of many of the presenters in the delivery of these ideas, has popularized an 18 minute presentation format that emphasizes story and big ideas.

Listen to Andrew Stanton from Pixar talk about what makes a great story:

When to use the ‘TED Talk’ style

•   Oral ‘stand-up’ presentations only
•   When you want to tell a story
•   When the focus is on big ideas
•   When you are presenting at TED (of course!)

The Lessig School

Larry Lessig is a Harvard Law Professor, founding board member of the Creative Commons, and strong proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum.

He is also an amazing speaker. Lessig has, over the years, developed a very unique style that he has continued to refine. Have a look:

Interesting characteristics of Lessig’s unique style include:

•   Many, many slides; sometimes pausing for only a moment between each
•   Slides contain either a single, compelling image or simple text
•   Talks built around compelling stories or anecdotes
•   Variable speaking pace, with an almost preacher like cadence
•   Passion (righteousness even)
•   Strong narrative core (don’t be distracted by the novelty of the slides). These are very, very well written talks

When to use the ‘Lessig’ style

•   When story plays a major role in communicating your message
•   When the focus is on big ideas and themes
•   When your narrative is where the power is coming from

Guy Kawasaki School

Guy Kawasaki, former Chief Evangelist at Apple and a silicon valley venture capitalist, evangelizes the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint presentations. The rule states that a presentation should have no more than 10 slides, take no longer than 20 minutes, a contain no font smaller than 30pt.

When to use the ‘Guy Kawasaki’ style

•   When you are pitching to Guy Kawasaki (or other VCs)
•   When your audience already has a good understanding of the content and likely structure of what you will say (as Kawasaki's VC-pitch examples illustrate in the video above)

Sit-down style presentations

There are many other styles. You may have noticed that these approaches to presentations have one thing in common; these Schools are all oriented towards the ‘stand-up in front of a crowd and give a speech’ type of presentation.

When we say presentation, we often mentally picture ourselves standing in front of a crowd. And this is a problem.

The majority of business ‘presentations’ are not made standing-up in front of a crowd. Instead, they are made sitting down, around a table, updating a project team, or presenting our thinking/ideas/suggestions to our boss.

The context of these types of ‘sit-down’ meetings has a profound effect on the style of the presentation we need to give.

These types of meetings and presentations:

•   Will be more detail oriented (performance to-date, operational reviews, financial reviews, project-plan updates, etc.)
•   Consist of small groups, in a more intimate setting
•   Are more likely to result in discussion, going off on tangents or drilling-deeper
•   Likely have the participants holding a hard-copy of the presentation in their hand, inches from their nose
•   Can cause similar levels of public speaking anxiety as speeches

Speeches, in this context, are, shall we say… inappropriate.

Yet the vast majority of the 'presentation training' literature is focused on teaching what we should do when we are standing up in front of our audience (to give a speech). Some of it focuses on the creation of the presentation, but for presentations in a forum type setting.

Learning to give a presentation is not the same as learning to create a presentation

Our focus here is on what to do when you are sitting down. Our focus is on the creation of content for the presentations we give everyday. The project update / status report / executive board business presentation.

These types of business presentations require a specific presentation approach that the consulting school of presentation design is tailor made for.

McKinsey & Co. are universally regarded as the gold standard in strategy consulting. McKinsey's multi-million dollar advice is delivered in a very specific way.

There are a number of factors that make the McKinsey presentation, or Consulting style of presentation, unique and powerful:

•   Clear, logical structure: The presentation takes you step by step through an argument
•   The logic is sound (bullet proof!), the argument is complete
•   Strict, consistent slide format - minimalist in design
•   Data intensive: Assertions are proven with facts; and facts are data-driven whenever possible
•   Quantitative data and other evidence is displayed and structured in simple and clean charts
•   The key messages are contained on the slides of the presentation
•   Can be read in advance, forwarded to others without losing meaning

This is not an exhaustive list of the characteristics of this style of presentation, but these are perhaps the most material. Hopefully you can see how they distinguish the consulting business presentation style from other approaches.

Zen-style presentations popularized by Garr Reynolds, for example, stand in stark contrast (reliance on imagery; focus on conference-style presentations).

Below is a BCG presentation, which is a good example of this type of presentation. We have annotated it with comments on how it could be even better, but, in general, it is a good example.

Fine, but does this approach work outside of consulting?

This approach to business presentation design applies across a range of different business situations:

•   Board meetings, senior executive meetings
•   Solution selling
•   Project updates / status meetings
•   Start-up investment pitches
•   Financial performance reviews etc. etc. etc.

If you are still in doubt as to when to use this style of business presentation, here are a few tests to apply:

•   Is it a business situation?
•   Do you need to communicate information in some depth?
•   Is it a ‘sit-down’ type setting (almost intimate)?

Have a look at the following presentation for an example of why the first test above is important ;-)

To create great presentations requires skills across a wide range of areas.

There are 5 disciplines one must master to effectively write and present impactful business presentations:

•   The Power of Logical Structure

The rest of this Advanced Guide to McKinsey-Style Presentations will dive deep into each of these disciplines.

Structure is a beautiful thing.

It brings order, clarity. It enables understanding. We know it when we see it (even if it is just subconsciously) because comprehension immediately becomes easier. Our mind is automatically sorting information into distinctive groups and establishing hierarchies of relationships between these groups (semantic network model) all the time.

Effective structure is the first commandment of presentation creation.

But what is logical structure? How do you create a presentation that has logical structure?

There are half a dozen or so tricks, which when employed obsessively, can allow you to quickly cut through most of the pitfalls (and fairly unhelpful theory of logic) to produce a structure that works.

Group your ideas together to form an argument

Your mind is automatically imposing order on everything around you, all the time. You are grouping, classifying and imposing relationships on all the information your brain processes.

The goal in crafting a presentation is to facilitate the mental processing that is going on in the mind of your audience. To make this processing as easy as possible.

We can do this in two ways:

1. Rule of 7 Updated: Limit the Number of Your Groups to 4

George Miller, a Harvard psychologist, published a famous study in 1957 entitled ' The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two '. This led to a well know rule of thumb that stated people only had the capacity to process 7 chunks of information at a time. Further research has enabled us to refine our understanding of how this rule changes depending on our definition of 'chunks' of information. More recent conclusions state that people can really only process 4-5 concepts - and only one at a time.

As a consequence, we should seek to structure our ideas into groups of 4-5 or less.

Put simply - there is no such thing as 7 or 9 of anything. If you have a list of 9 things, then you need to go up a level of abstraction and group them into 3-4 buckets.

It is easy to take this insight too far. There is no magical number of bullets per slide. Edward Tufte has some interesting things to say about this here . At its core, this is about a relatively self evident truth: Your audience will struggle to process information. Help them out by being aware of the number of discrete ideas you are sharing at any one time.

2. MECE: Ensure your Groups are Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive

MECE stands for mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. It is terminology that today is synonymous with McKinsey and other top-tier consultancies.

The term refers to the idea of structuring lists of ideas in ways where the list is:

•   Collectively Exhaustive (collectively, the ideas in the list cover all possible components of the idea)
•   Mutually Exclusive (individually, each idea in the list is distinct from each of the other ideas, there is no overlap between ideas)

The easiest way to get your head around these ideas is with an example.

The following list of the 7 dwarves is not collectively exhaustive:

We are missing Doc!

The following list of options for where to go for dinner is not mutually exclusive:

•   Restaurants East of our current location
•   Italian restaurants
•   Restaurants with music
•   Restaurants South of our current location

There is overlap within this list. There could be Italian restaurants east of us. Some restaurants south of us could have music.

This 'test' (is this list MECE?) is extremely powerful technique in ensuring logical structure and improving the clarity of your presentation.

You will be surprised at how many groups of ideas you will create which will fail this test - and result in you thinking about additional, great points and ideas that make you argument even more powerful.

Inductive vs deductive arguments

Deductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion.

The scientific method uses deduction to test hypotheses and theories. The deductive argument presents ideas in successive steps. An example of this type of argument is:

•   John is ill
•   If John is ill, he will be unable to attend work
•   Therefore, John will be unable to attend work

Inductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning (know also as induction or 'bottom-up' logic), is a kind of reasoning that constructs general arguments that are derived from specific examples. Inductive arguments can take very wide ranging forms. Inductive arguments might conclude with a claim that is only based on a sample of information.

Here is an example of an inductive argument.

•   Two independent witnesses claimed John committed the murder.
•   John’s fingerprints are the only ones on the murder weapon.
•   John confessed to the crime.
•   So, John committed the murder.

Generally, our advice is to construct inductive-based arguments. They are easier for an audience to absorb because they require less effort to understand.

The challenge is that our instinct when writing a presentation is to present our thinking in the order we did the work, which is usually a deductive process.

DON"T DO THIS. No one cares what you did. How hard you worked. They want an answer to a question, not a tour of what you were up to for the last month!

Pay special attention to the Introduction

The start of a presentation requires special attention from a structural point of view.

It contains many traps which can lead unsuspecting authors astray. The purpose of the presentation is to address a question in the mind of the audience. The objective of the introduction is to establish the groundwork to plant this question, so that the rest of our presentation can focus on answering it.

The best approach for achieving this is Barbara Minto's SCQA framework. Buy Barbara's exceptional book The Pyramid Principle .

Context (or starting point): Where are we now?

Financial performance last year was fantastic, but growth has stalled in the first quarter…

Begin at the beginning. The Situation/Context or Starting Point is the background or baseline that anchors the rest of the story that will subsequently unfold. It is comprised of facts that the audience would be aware of and agree with in advance of reading the presentation. This helps to ground the presentation and establish a common starting point.

Typical situations are “we took an action”, "performance was good", "we have a problem".

Soon the audience will be asking themselves “I know this – why are you telling me?”. This is where the complication comes in.

Catalyst (or Complication): Something has changed...

A strategy for returning to growth has been proposed...

What happened next? The Complication creates tension in the story you’re telling. The key objective of the complication is to trigger the Question that your audience will ask in their mind.

Typical complications: “something is stopping us performing the task”, “we know the solution to the problem”, “a solution to the problem has been suggested” and “the action we took did not work”.

Question: The Question in the Mind of the Audience

Is this the right strategy?

The Question arises logically from the Complication and leads into the Answer. It is not explicitly stated in the introduction, it is implicit.

Typical questions: “what should we do?”, “how do we implement the solution?”, “is it the right solution?” and “why didn’t the action work?”

Answer (or Solution): Your answer to the Question

Yes, it will drive growth because…

The Answer to the Question is the substance of presentation and your main point. It is your recommendation. Summarize it first – completing your introduction – then break it down into details and write the main body of your presentations. This is where we develop our inductive argument, deploying groups of MECE ideas on the way to proving our point.

Call to Action (or Next Steps): What you want the Audience to do

We need to do this next

The call to action is the list of next steps that you want your audience to do.

You need next steps.

In fact, the next steps are the objective of your entire presentation. You want to identify these next steps early in the process of developing your presentation so that you can be sure to design a presentation that drives your audience to the action you desire.

Don’t leave the thinking around what the next steps are until the end.

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact. Robert McKee, Author and Screenwriter

Storytelling is a timeless human tradition. Before the written word, people would memorize stories that shaped cultures for generations. We are wired for communicating through and learning from stories.

All presentations are, at their heart, a story.

Via storytelling techniques we can elevate our presentations to something that moves people. Sometimes, it is obvious that this is our goal. We are presenting at TED. We are making a speech to our employees about our new strategy. We are delivering our first State of the Union address...

Often, it is not.

Our topic may feel mundane - lacking the grand themes that great stories seem to require. When this happens, often our mistake is in framing the objective of our presentation as an exercise in conveying information - to update.

Rather, the objective of our presentations should be to persuade. To, in-fact, establish in the minds of the audience an important question, and persuade that audience of the validity of our answer.

When we need to update - we need to identify the question the audience should have in their minds as a consequence of the update. In many case it will be ‘what do I need to do next’.

As a rule of thumb:

If you don't have something to say, why are you presenting? If you are presenting, know what you have to say.

Why stories are effective.

There are a couple of reasons why stories can be more effective than fact-based arguments at persuading audiences.

1. While some opinions people hold are rational and thought-out, many others are emotional

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Your favorite sports team?

You cannot change an emotionally charged opinion with a rational argument, but you can get your audience to empathize with a hero in a story and thereby affect the emotions they have connected to that subject.

Presenting a rational argument immediately activates the audience's critical mind, inviting him or her to analyze and counter-argue. By immersing your audience in a story, you bypass that resistance.

2. Stories are memorable and, as a consequence, are easier to repeat

As we have discussed, our brains think in terms of stories. We find it easier and more efficient to process stories. In fact, we have a pronounced bias towards stories.

As a consequence your audience is much more likely to remember the stories you tell them (and the messages those stories contain) and more likely to repeat them to others.

What makes a great story?

As a primer, have a listen to Academy award nominated documentary film maker Ken Burns (The Civil War, Jazz) talk about story (especially the fist half). In the video Burns explores what makes a great story. The '3' Burns references is what we are seeking to capture in any great presentation.

Nancy Duarte does a fantastic job of exploring how story is critical to the creation of a great presentation.

In this video, Nancy makes the point that stories and reports occupy opposite ends of a spectrum.

She makes the case that in order to convey the meaning behind your report, you need to introduce elements of story, in order to engage with your audience on a more human level. The appropriate balance you need to strike between story and reporting will be entirely driven by the context of your own presentation.

We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts. John Dewey, Pragmatist philosopher (1859 - -1952)

The Bare Assertion

CEO: So you are saying that I need to invest $100 million now or we will go out of business?

Presenter: Yes.

CEO: And why is that again?

Presenter: Because I said so…?

To convince and persuade in today’s corporate world business people must construct evidence-based arguments. They must demonstrate, not simply assert.

Edward Tufte makes a great case for what he calls informational depth.

Executives are not dumb. When you are presenting to them they need informational depth. When people are presenting to you, you need to figure out what their story is, but also need to decide whether you can believe them. Are they competent? … Detail helps credibility. Edward Tufte, Author, statistician & professor

This, unfortunately, requires significant effort, work, and thinking to pull-off.

The effort required to do this is also a key reason why so many poor presentations lack a fact-based approach to persuasion. There are no short cuts. This is where real effort pays off with discriminating audiences.

Often discriminating audiences (senior executives, investors, advisers, challenging customers) will see their role being a ‘stress-tester’. They will test your assertions. Challenge your data. Poke, probe and dissect your analysis.

Your audience does this because they suspect what you are saying is important. And if they act on what you are saying, and it turns out you were wrong… well this would reflect negatively on them. So, in a way, receiving the third-degree in a presentation can be a good sign.

If you pass the test.

It is for situations like this that you need data, facts and proof. You will be eaten alive if you simply assert.

But your data, facts and proof should be in support of your structure, your story. The goal is not to squeeze in all the analysis you have done. Inevitably much of your analysis will not be required to make your central argument. Be equally ruthless in sorting and prioritizing what analysis is required to make your point.

Tables and Graphs

They are fundamentally different.

When you have data that you would like to present, resist the urge to throw it into the sexiest 3D pie chart you can create.

Instead, think first about how you intend to use the data and what point you are trying to make with the data.

Graphs and tables excel at different things and depending on your purpose, one will be a better choice than another.

The primary benefit of a table is that it makes it easy to look up individual values. There are four uses of data for which a table is a good option:

•   Look-up individual values
•   Compare individual values (but not entire series of values)
•   Present precise values, and
•   Present both summary and detail values

Business Charts, on the other hand, present the overall shape of the data. Graphs are used to display relationships among and between sets of quantitative values by giving them shape.

Use charts and graphs when:

•   The message or story is contained in the shape of the data
•   The display will be used to reveal relationships among whole sets of values

Common Graphs

Quantitative values can be represented in graphs using the following:

• Shapes with varying 2D areas
• Shapes with varying color intensity

When determining what type of graph to select, it is absolutely critical that you first consider what you are trying to say with the data.

When you are in the diagnostic phase of your work, you may not know what the data has to say, so you will try a few different approaches. But once it comes time to creating your presentation, the data on the page exists to support the message you have in your headline. You will have a very specific message you will want the data to convey. You will have a specific relationship that you will want to represent.

And here are what graphs are best to illustrate each type of data relationship:

Design is thinking made visual. Saul Bass, Graphic Designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker

Some people don't see the same way you do

Some people's visual processing thought routines are more word oriented, others are more visually oriented.

Visual thinking is the phenomenon of thinking through visual processing - it has been described as seeing words as a series of pictures.

Research by child development theorist Linda Kreger Silverman suggests that about 30% of the population strongly uses visual/spatial thinking, another 45% uses both visual/spatial thinking and thinking in the form of words, and 25% thinks exclusively in words.

This research has a profound impact on how we need to think about communicating our ideas. It is the principle reason (although most people don't really recognize it) why there has been a shift from the vertical memorandum (written in word, exclusively text), to the horizontal PowerPoint presentation (written in PowerPoint, containing text and visuals) - modern presentations are easier to understand!

It demands of us as presentation creators to continually think about how our ideas and concepts can be represented both verbally, but also visually.

Design is important, but can be challenging

Design, for many, is a challenge. Many attempt to solve this problem by hiring an agency to design a PowerPoint template for them. Or outsourcing the entire presentation design.

We recommend a different approach, one rooted in investing a bit of effort and in applying a good understanding of the type of design that works best for presentations.

Invest the time to make the presentation look decent

Many people believe (or use an excuse) that 'it's the content that counts'.

Spend the effort to make the presentation look good (it isn’t that hard).

Sign-up for our free trial and download our free template to get you started:

Practice a simplicity design ethos - not simple thinking

The very basics of slide design are not difficult to master because, in general, less is always more.

The very best presentation design eliminates the excess. It is a minimalist strategy to focus on only what matters, and to avoid distracting the reader away from the central point.

This minimalist design approach is not an aesthetic preference. It is a design strategy to support our presentation goal - the communication of our message. The design of our presentation, of each slide, should be solely focused on supporting that goal.

Focus on what your point is, and the key evidence required to prove that point - design around this.

You do not need to be a graphics designer to create very effectively designed presentation slides.

Here are some basic design rules of thumb to get you started:

Rules of Thumb (applied aggressively, obsessively)

1. adopt a message-driven slide layout.

•   Have a single, primary idea per slide
•   Put this main idea in your headline that spans the top of the page
•   Make your headline no more than two lines long
•   Put content in the main body of the slide that contains the proof of the main assertion / idea that is in the headline

2. Align all elements on each page neatly

•   Make sure the position of the headline on each slide is in the exact same spot on every slide
•   When you flip through your slides (like with those old picture books that created moving images when you flipped through them) the position of the headline should not move, the font size should not change
•   This also goes for other common design elements on each slide (logo, copyright notice, page number etc.)

3. In many instances, a picture is worth significantly more that 1,000 words

•   Use powerful, relevant images
•   Do NOT use stock photography
•   Do NOT use clip art
•   Use images judiciously, don’t go over board

4. Colors should be muted; Brighter colors used for emphasis

•   Don't use bright colors like red, orange or yellow, except to highlight an important point
•   Use a tool like Adobe Kuler to design an attractive color scheme that won't give your audience a headache

5. Use whitespace, use contrast

•   Be careful to use enough spacing – whitespace between lines and paragraphs is good
•   Whitespace improves legibility, increases comprehension, increases emphasis, and creates the right one
•   Use contrast to emphasize difference
•   Ways to create contrast include using contrasting colors, sizes, shapes, locations, or relationships

6. Don't use crazy animations, 3D, or random special effects

•   Just don't. Emulate modern 'flat' design style (think Metro interface, google design refresh etc.)
•   The wow of your presentation comes from the power of your ideas. Spiral animation entrances are not going to help

7. Don't use pie charts

•   This is a pet peeve of mine, but pie charts are visually difficult to interpret - other chart types (bar charts) are significantly more effective
•   Serious presenters know this and don't use them - when you do it makes you look like an amateur

8. Use typography

•   Custom fonts give your presentation a nice distinctive look that allows it to stand out in a sea of Arial
•   Many great custom fonts are now available for free - check out Google Fonts, they can be downloaded and used on your desktop within PowerPoint

The passions are the only orators that always persuade. Francois de La Rochefoucauld, Author, moralist (1613 - 1680)

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe. Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1874 - 1965)

The presentation has been written. The work has been put in. It is time to start thinking about the act of delivering the presentation.

Our view is that ‘winging it’ tends to not be a good strategy.

Preparation

Preparation, once the deck has been written, means practice.

We suggest the following approach:

1. Develop a script

Write down a formal voice-over script of what you will say. Write this down in advance.

Adopt simplified language. You want to be interpreting the content on the slide, not reading it!

2. Memorize the script

Rehearse until you have memorized your script. We know this is boring. Try speaking the script out loud. In our experience it is very difficult to memorize a script simply reading it to yourself.

3. Finally, abandon the script

Once you have spent enough time memorizing the script you will start to feel comfortable deviating and embellishing.

Use your script as a road-map during delivery, rather than a crutch. It is your safety net.

This robust approach takes time and, to be honest, may only be appropriate for the most important of meetings. But it works.

Deliver with Conviction, Passion and Drama

You must believe in your material for others to believe in you.

A fact-based approach to persuasion, and logical structure are techniques that, when applied, position you to have a very high degree of confidence in your material.

The standards are high (and sometimes unforgiving). By meeting them in advance, you can enter the room with a high level of confidence in your material.

Enthusiasm is contagious.

Show your passion for the material. If the topic is as dull as dishwater, show passion for the elegance of your thinking and the power of your recommendations. This is killer.

A little drama (mixed in with some storytelling) can really elevate a presentation.

This drama can be inherent in the complication/catalyst. It is also embedded in the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). Play this up and occasionally reference the implications of what you are saying to this.

Chapter 10: The Process to Write a Killer Presentation

What follows are a set of presentation tips in the form of a step-by-step list of what you need to do to create a killer presentation. The SlideHeroes course includes an interactive checklist that allows you to keep track of each step as you progress.

Before you start, determine where in the thinking process you are.

Ask yourself the following key questions:

•   Have you finished your analysis, and are now embarking on the final phase of summarizing your findings? 
•   Or are you still trying to figure out the question you should be answering?

Often people will turn to PowerPoint long before they have completed their thinking – try to resist this urge, use paper instead.

Once you are finally ready to write your presentation - stop.

Consider crafting your elevator pitch instead.

Imagine: your meeting has been cancelled, but you manage to catch your audience in the elevator on the way out of the building. You have 1 minute – what do you want to say?

Often we are better at ‘getting to the point’ orally. As soon as we start thinking in terms of a presentation, we can sometimes lose the plot. This exercise will help you capture the main thrust of what your presentation is meant to convey early on in the process.

Apply our 'Who, Why, What, How' process

Begin the process of writing a business presentation by reviewing our 4-step process. This process is your roadmap of what you need to do. Briefly review what you need to do at each step:

•   Identify WHO your audience is
•   Determine WHY you are speaking with them
•   Determine WHAT your answer is to your audience's question
•   Decide HOW to best communicate that answer

Once you have taken stock, determined where you are in your thought process, and are ready to proceed.

The first major step is to identify WHO our audience is.

This sounds easy. But there are critical nuances that you need to be aware of which we will explore.

A. Identify Who your Audience is

Determine who the hero of your presentation is (hint it is not you - it is your audience).

A nuance to be aware of is that sometimes the true target of your presentation may not be obvious. You may be speaking to a group you don’t know well and, as a consequence, may not have a full understanding of the political dynamics at play. Who are the true decision makers? Who can truly help you progress to the next step?

During this step you need to take the time to identify who within your audience you are truly speaking to – who matters.

B. Profile your Audience

Once you have identified your Audience, spend some time profiling them.

Ask yourself the following questions about your audience:

•   How much will the audience know about the situation/topic before we start the presentation?
•   How do they prefer to consume information?
•   Visual bias? Numerical bias?
•   Pre-read in advance?
•   What is the best timing of messages?

The second major step in our process is determining WHY you are presenting and your goal for the meeting.

A. Determine the Context of the Presentation

The next three tasks in our process are focused on building our Introduction and isolating the question we are answering for our Audience.

The reason we are creating a presentation, is always to answer a question that is in the mind of our audience.

The context is the background to the presentation. It contains information the audience already knows.

B. Identify the Catalyst of the Presentation or meeting

The Catalyst is the complication in the story that has resulted in the problem we are here to answer.

What happened, changed or was realized that is causing us to meet today? What led us to do the analysis or work to answer your question?

C. Determine the Question

Determine the question you are there to answer.

Most questions will fall into one of these 4 types:

• I have a problem: Why did it happen? or,
• I have a problem: What should we do?
• I have a problem, someone has suggested a solution: Should we adopt that solution?
• I have a problem, someone has suggested a solution: How should we implement this solution?

D. Determine the Objective / Next Step for the Meeting

You need next steps. You need a call to action. The objective of your presentation should be for your audience to DO SOMETHING as a result of you presenting your material.

What do you want your audience to do?

What do you need your audience to understand to achieve the meeting’s goal?

The third major step is to determine and write WHAT your answer is to your audience’s question.

The Power of Logical Structure

A. gather existing work; develop new thinking.

Do the work.

This is where your own domain expertise comes in. Suffice it to say, you need to do the work, the analysis, the thinking to answer the question.

•   Gather existing content (improve on it)
•   Conduct new analysis

Create ideas first, slides second.

B. summarize and organize your ideas.

•   Organise your argument into logical groups
•   Bucket arguments into MECE groups
•   Use visual thinking tools to capture and organize your ideas

The Art of Storytelling

A. storyboard the presentation.

Storyboarding is a technique for writing that was first developed by Walt Disney for use in the creation of animated movies.

Have a listen to Pixar describe how they use storyboarding in film:

Storyboarding is a fantastic technique for developing presentations because it allows you to work on text, visuals and structure simultaneously.

The Harmony of Design

B. develop a slide template, c. develop content for each slide.

•   Write out each heading for each slide
•   Write out each sub-heading for each supporting piece of evidence/chart
•   Design charts and supporting visuals
•   Open PowerPoint!
•   Populate slides with supporting evidence

The Science of Fact-based Persuasion

D. develop graphs and tables for your data.

•   Determine what tables or chart types are best for the data you wish to show
•   Create the tables or charts
•   Reduce and eliminate chart-junk
•   Design tables and graphs to emphasize the key data elements that support your story

The Drama of Performance

A. practice.

Practice makes perfect. So practice.

•   Do an initial run through of the presentation. Speak the presentation out loud and improvise
•   Write this version down as a formal script
•   Run through the presentation two or three more times working on length, simplifying language
•   If the length needs editing, revise the presentation, eliminating or combining slide ideas
•   Present to someone else to solicit feedback and simulate a ‘live’ presentation
•   Run through the script a few more times and then park it
•   Get a good night’s sleep; review the script once or twice just before the presentation
•   Conduct a pre-presentation flight-check to ensure you have everything you need
•   Deliver with conviction, passion and drama
•   Focus on just a few things to ensure a great delivery:
• Manage your stress - quite your mind, breathe, relax
• Adopting the right ‘tone’ and approach
• Being yourself. Relax!
• Communicating both verbally and physically (kinetically)
• Answer your Audience’s questions

Below are the set of presentation tools we recommend to create fantastic business presentations.

Presentation Creation

I know everyone rags on PowerPoint. It just isn’t PowerPoints fault.

It is still the best we have got.

Pretty cool 'zoom' transition effects. Kind of hard to use, places huge emphasis on design skills.

Chart Design

We can do so much better than PowerPoint and Excel…

Plotly charts look great. The interface is easy to use and there is a good variety of chart types to select from.

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Similar to Plotly, RAW produces great looking charts. There is a wide selection of chart types (you can also create your own). Powerful.

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Web apps that help create fantastic graphics, easily.

Image design tool. Very, very easy and quick. Pretty Awesome.

Poor man's Photoshop. Particularly good at retouching photos.

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PowerPoint plugins that can turbo charge your productivity

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If you are still hungry for more here are some great books, blogs and courses(!) that may pique your interest.

I recommend the following great books:

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•   Show Me the Numbers , Stephen Few

The following blogs are among my favorites:

•   Storytelling with Data , Cole Nussbaumer
•   Presentation Zen , Garr Reynolds
•   SlideMagic , Jan Schultink

Our course (Decks for Decision Makers)

The Decks for Decision Makers course takes the concepts covered in this Advanced Guide to Writing McKinsey-Style Presentations and drills deeper into each. In the course, video lessons and PowerPoint slide examples allow you to fully explore all of the many concepts discussed in this Guide.

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

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Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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More From Forbes

3 keys to ensuring your technology scales with your business.

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Scaling technology and website infrastructure

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, scaling your technology and website infrastructure in step with your business growth is a formidable challenge. It's a journey demanding vision, strategic savvy, and the agility to pivot with changing demands.

Among the emerging technologies reshaping this journey, generative AI tops the list. According to McKinsey, the potential economic impact of generative AI could reach up to $4.4 trillion across various use cases, highlighting its significance in driving business forward. However, the report also reveals a significant preparedness gap, with only 21% of companies having established policies for the use of generative AI technologies. This statistic is representative of

a fundamental need: Businesses must integrate strategic planning and adaptability into technology scaling efforts at all costs.

Navigating the strategic landscape of scaling technology

The exploration into scaling strategies calls attention to the need for a proactive, comprehensive approach to optimization. As businesses grow, their technological focus shifts from launching a minimum viable product to enhancing their tech stack with cutting-edge analytics and artificial intelligence tweaks. Essential tactics—scalable setups, speed boosts, ironclad security, and smart automation—lay the groundwork for unstoppable growth.

"Scaling technology and website architecture often present businesses with numerous challenges, including performance issues, scalability limitations, security concerns, and maintainability issues," says Matt Dorman, partner and senior solutions architect at Ndevr, a company specializing in the development and support of WordPress websites. "It's crucial to invest in scalable infrastructure that can grow with the business, utilizing cloud-based solutions like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), or Microsoft Azure for flexibility and scalability," Dorman advises. "Regular assessment of technology needs ensures businesses can adjust their investments to support sustainable growth and success at each stage of the business lifecycle.”

Gervonta Davis’ Next Fight: ‘Tank’ Has An Opponent For His Return

Warner bros reveals 115 million investment in harry potter attraction, how the dallas mavericks can win their series with the los angeles clippers.

Dorman's insights bring to light a key aspect of modern business growth: The scalability of your technology infrastructure is fundamental. Opting for flexible cloud solutions is critical, but the strategy doesn't end there. Regularly evaluating your technology needs is just as vital. This balanced approach ensures your business selects the right technology and remains agile and responsive to the demands of an ever-changing market.

Optimizing performance and flexibility for growth

Moving from the broader challenges of technology scaling into the intricacies of artificial intelligence, it's clear that transitioning from experimental phases to full-scale production is no small feat. Faced with maintaining model performance and adhering to ethical standards, leaders in the field are turning to strategic enablers such as data products (feature stores) and Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), as McKinsey's research points out. These innovations tackle the risks tied to scaling AI , like productivity erosion and compliance issues, and also speed up the development and deployment of machine learning models. By ensuring AI strategies grow in lockstep with the business, these approaches stress the importance of technological adaptability—a perfect segue into exploring how optimizing performance and flexibility becomes pivotal for growth.

When introducing new revenue streams, consider the technology and architectural implications. Integrating new features must not compromise system resilience. Adopting a modular, decoupled architecture improves system flexibility, allowing for smooth new feature integration. When you prioritize interoperability and user experience, you can ensure expansion efforts enhance rather than compromise the customer value proposition.

As businesses set out to diversify their revenue streams, the combination of technology and design choices becomes key. This strategic shift calls for a strong and adaptable infrastructure, stressing the need to create a user-focused experience that aligns with new offerings. By ensuring that the integration of new features or services complements the existing ecosystem without sacrificing performance or scalability, organizations can forge a path towards sustainable expansion.

3 strategies for scalable growth

Transitioning from the complexities of architectural optimization to the broader landscape of technology scaling, three fundamental strategies become the foundation of successful growth and diversification.

1. Chart your course with data-driven goals

In the quest for scalability, the key lies in data-driven decision making . This approach revolves around analyzing key performance data to guide business strategies, moving beyond intuition to fact-based decisions. Leveraging business intelligence (BI) tools is crucial for simplifying data analysis and visualization to foster actionable insights that directly inform decision-making.

By systematically evaluating performance data, businesses can address scalability challenges head-on, optimizing resource allocation for enhanced profitability and operational efficiency. A data-informed strategy, for example, can be instrumental in identifying and rectifying performance bottlenecks for e-commerce clients and significantly boost website performance and customer satisfaction.

2. Boost productivity through automation

Adopting a data-driven approach and integrating no-code automation enhances operational efficiency and scalability, empowering non-technical staff to innovate and improve workflows without deep technical skills. This shift boosts productivity, reduces costs, and speeds up digital solution development across departments.

No-code automation is also making business processes more efficient and adaptable, such as streamlining HR onboarding to save time and improve new employee satisfaction. It enables quick adjustments to meet new challenges, keeping businesses agile. Leveraging no-code solutions not only drives productivity and operational efficiency but promotes continuous improvement and innovation.

3. Prioritize the customer journey

A successful scaling strategy places the customer journey at its core. Customizing technology and web optimizations to improve user experience ensures alignment with customer needs as the business scales. Whenever your business can provide an excellent user experience, you can foster loyalty and sustainable expansion. Tools like customer journey orchestration and AI analytics are key, offering a personalized, omnichannel experience that is a must for digital-first consumers.

This approach involves refining website architecture and technology to improve the user experience. Every interaction must be intuitive. Through scalability testing, performance monitoring, and analytics, companies can proactively address challenges to enhance customer satisfaction. AI insights can further enable the automation of tailored interactions to help businesses stay ahead of customer expectations and drive significant growth in a competitive market.

Scaling your tech and website infrastructure is key to growth. Zero in on strategic planning and supercharge the customer experience with data-driven moves and smart automation. This strategy bulletproofs your operations and sets you up for a winning future, crafting a tech ecosystem that's strong, flexible, and all about the customer. In the digital race, this savvy approach isn't just nice to have—it's your ticket to long-term success.

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The highest-paying in-demand jobs that don't require a degree, according to new research

If you're looking for a career that pays well, doesn't require a college degree and offers strong job security, you might want to consider a trade job. 

The U.S. skilled labor market is facing "record-high pressure," according to new research from McKinsey & Co. , as more workers age out and fewer young people train to fill their jobs as construction workers, plumbers, welders and more. 

Labor shortages — amplified by disruptions to in-person work and material shortages during the Covid-19 pandemic — have created more competition for talent, and, as a result, wages for skilled trade jobs have risen by more than 20% since the first quarter of 2020, McKinsey & Co. reports.

Demand for skilled tradespeople is expected to increase over the next decade and remain high in the U.S. due to infrastructure needs, a surge in real estate redevelopment and investments in renewable energy.

The most in-demand jobs companies are hiring for right now — that don't require a degree — are in construction, manufacturing and plumbing, according to data from Payscale and ZipRecruiter exclusively shared with CNBC Make It : 

1. Construction superintendent

Median salary: $84,600

2. Manufacturing production manager

Median salary: $71,800

3. Journeyman plumber

Median salary: $61,500

It's important to note that there are different levels of certification for some trade jobs including plumbers and electricians. For plumbers, there are three levels : Apprentice, journeyman and master. 

If you want to work as a journeyman plumber, you'll need to work as an apprentice under a licensed master plumber for at least 2 years, depending on your state's requirements, according to Indeed.

To compile the list, Payscale analyzed 85,715 salary profiles from U.S. workers with no education higher than a high school diploma. The salary data was collected between April 2022 and April 2024. From that sample, Payscale identified a list of jobs and ranked them by median pay for workers without degrees.

Then, to determine which high-paying jobs are seeing the most demand, ZipRecruiter looked at hiring trends for these roles over the last six months to see which jobs saw the biggest increase in openings. 

All of these jobs saw at least a 16% increase in openings on ZipRecruiter between October 2023 and March 2024. Construction superintendents have seen the largest uptick in demand, with openings surging more than 128%.

Other high-paying trade jobs that have seen slightly less demand, but are still hiring at a good clip, include fleet managers, who oversee drivers and vehicles, like delivery trucks, owned or leased by their companies, and journeyman electricians. The median pay for fleet managers without degrees is $64,600 while journeyman electricians make $62,600 on average, according to Payscale. 

Careers in construction, manufacturing and home services, which have historically prioritized skills over degrees in hiring, still present some of the best opportunities for people to earn up to six figures without going to college, says Ruth Thomas, a pay equity strategist with Payscale. 

Although more companies are dropping degree requirements for jobs, skills-based hiring is still a newer trend that "hasn't become common practice" across all industries just yet, Thomas adds. 

Want to land your dream job in 2024?  Take  CNBC's new online course How to Ace Your Job Interview  to learn what hiring managers are really looking for, body language techniques, what to say and not to say, and the best way to talk about pay.

Plus, sign up for   CNBC Make It's newsletter  to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.

Leaked presentation reveals Microsoft's astounding plan to ramp up data-center capacity for the AI boom

• Microsoft's data-center capacity jumped in recent quarters, a leaked internal presentation shows.
• The company is planning even faster data-center growth in the coming quarters.
• Microsoft delivered "record-level GPU capacity," according to the presentation.

Microsoft significantly expanded its data-center capacity recently and plans to ramp up growth to astounding levels going forward, according to an internal document obtained by Business Insider.

Since July 2023, the start of Microsoft's latest fiscal year, the company delivered more than 500 megawatts of new data-center capacity , the document disclosed.

This document was part of a confidential slide deck from the company's Cloud Operations and Innovation team that was presented earlier this year.

Under the heading "Commercial Cloud and AI Demands: Fueling our Expansion," the document said Microsoft surpassed 5 gigawatts of total data-center installed capacity in the first half of its latest fiscal year.

The rise of generative artificial intelligence and huge foundation models is fueling a new data-center boom . Microsoft is leading the way through its partnership with OpenAI , the startup behind ChatGPT and GPT-4 .

These AI models need to be trained on mountains of data and then fine-tuned intensely. That takes thousands of GPUs and a pile of other related gear that's housed in huge data centers. These facilities use so much power that their capacity is measured in megawatts and gigawatts of electricity.

Shaolei Ren , an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, said Microsoft's 5 gigawatts of installed data-center capacity, if fully used, would be equivalent to Hong Kong or Portugal's annual electricity consumption.

"Astonishing speed"

It doesn't stop there. The software giant laid out even more radical growth plans for its data-center empire in the document obtained by BI.

Related stories

"With a strong Commercial Cloud business, our goal is clear," Microsoft said in this part of the slide presentation.

Microsoft wants to double new data-center capacity in the second half of its fiscal year. This runs from early 2024 to the middle of this year.

In the first half of Microsoft's 2025 fiscal year, which runs from early July through the end of 2024, the company aims to "achieve 3x growth" in new data-center capacity.

This requires Microsoft to deliver more than 200 megawatts in data-center capacity every month.

"This is an astonishing speed," Ren told BI. "This is a very large data-center capacity."

Ren said Microsoft's capacity plans suggested the company was either seeing huge demand or simply wanting to stay competitive by securing future power capacity that otherwise might be taken by competitors.

He added that this also raised questions about the environmental consequences of adding such a large data-center footprint, given the carbon emissions and water consumption of the facilities.

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment.

'Record-level GPU capacity'

The company is also securing a record number of GPUs to handle new AI workloads in data centers.

In the second half of last year, Microsoft delivered "record-level GPU capacity," more than doubling its total installed GPU base, the document said, without mentioning actual numbers.

Microsoft's GPU footprint expanded into 39 additional data centers in this period, and the company now has "AI clusters" live in 98 locations globally.

Contact the reporter, Eugene Kim, via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram ( +1-650-942-3061 ) or email ( [email protected] ). Reach out using a nonwork device. Check out Business Insider's source guide for other tips on sharing information securely.

Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands' reporting.

Watch: How tech layoffs could affect the economy

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Smart cities: Digital solutions for a more livable future

Until recently, city leaders thought of smart technologies primarily as tools for becoming more efficient behind the scenes. Now technology is being injected more directly into the lives of residents. Smartphones have become the keys to the city, putting instant information about transit, traffic, health services, safety alerts, and community news into millions of hands.

After a decade of trial and error, municipal leaders are realizing that smart-city strategies start with people, not technology. “ Smartness ” is not just about installing digital interfaces in traditional infrastructure or streamlining city operations. It is also about using technology and data purposefully to make better decisions and deliver a better quality of life .

Quality of life has many dimensions, from the air residents breathe to how safe they feel walking the streets. The latest report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Smart cities: Digital solutions for a more livable future (PDF–6MB), analyzes how dozens of digital applications address these kinds of practical and very human concerns. It finds that cities can use smart technologies to improve some key quality-of-life indicators by 10 to 30 percent—numbers that translate into lives saved, fewer crime incidents, shorter commutes, a reduced health burden, and carbon emissions averted.

What makes a city smart?

Smart-city technologies have substantial unrealized potential to improve the urban quality of life, a look at current deployment in 50 cities around the world shows that even the most advanced still have a long way to go, smart cities change the economics of infrastructure and create room for partnerships and private-sector participation.

Smart cities put data and digital technology to work to make better decisions and improve the quality of life. More comprehensive, real-time data gives agencies the ability to watch events as they unfold, understand how demand patterns are changing, and respond with faster and lower-cost solutions.

Three layers work together to make a smart city hum (Exhibit 1). First is the technology base, which includes a critical mass of smartphones and sensors connected by high-speed communication networks. The second layer consists of specific applications. Translating raw data into alerts, insight, and action requires the right tools, and this is where technology providers and app developers come in. The third layer is usage by cities, companies, and the public. Many applications succeed only if they are widely adopted and manage to change behavior. They encourage people to use transit during off-hours, to change routes, to use less energy and water and to do so at different times of day, and to reduce strains on the healthcare system through preventive self-care.

MGI assessed how smart-city applications could affect various quality-of-life dimensions: safety, time and convenience, health, environmental quality, social connectedness and civic participation, jobs, and the cost of living (see interactive). The wide range of outcomes reflects the fact that applications perform differently from city to city, depending on factors such as legacy infrastructure systems and on baseline starting points.

Applications can help cities fight crime and improve other aspects of public safety

Deploying a range of applications to their maximum effect could potentially reduce fatalities (from homicide, road traffic, and fires) by 8 to 10 percent. In a high-crime city with a population of five million, this could mean saving up to 300 lives each year. Incidents of assault, robbery, burglary, and auto theft could be lowered by 30 to 40 percent. On top of these metrics are the incalculable benefits of giving residents freedom of movement and peace of mind.

Technology is not a quick fix for crime, but agencies can use data to deploy scarce resources and personnel more effectively. Real-time crime mapping, for instance, utilizes statistical analysis to highlight patterns, while predictive policing goes a step further, anticipating crime to head off incidents before they occur. When incidents do occur, applications such as gunshot detection, smart surveillance, and home security systems can accelerate law-enforcement response. But data-driven policing has to be deployed in a way that protects civil liberties and avoids criminalizing specific neighborhoods or demographic groups.

Seconds count when lives are at stake, making speed critical for first responders in getting to the scene of emergencies. Smart systems can optimize call centers and field operations, while traffic-signal preemption gives emergency vehicles a clear driving path. These types of applications could cut emergency response times by 20 to 35 percent. A city with an already low response time of eight minutes could shave off almost two minutes. A city starting with an average response time of 50 minutes might be able to trim that by more than 17 minutes.

Smart-city technologies can make daily commutes faster and less frustrating

Tens of millions of people in cities worldwide begin and end every workday fuming in traffic or piling into overcrowded buses and trains. Improving the daily commute is critical to quality of life.

By 2025, cities that deploy smart-mobility applications have the potential to cut commuting times by 15 to 20 percent on average, with some people enjoying even larger reductions. The potential associated with each application is highly variable, depending on each city’s density, existing transit infrastructure, and commuting patterns. In a dense city with extensive transit, smart technologies could save the average commuter almost 15 minutes a day. In a developing city with more grueling commutes, the improvement might be 20 to 30 minutes every day.

In general, cities with extensive, well-used transit systems benefit from applications that streamline the experience for riders. Using digital signage or mobile apps to deliver real-time information about delays enables riders to adjust their routes on the fly. Installing IoT sensors on existing physical infrastructure can help crews fix problems before they turn into breakdowns and delays.

Applications that ease road congestion are more effective in cities where driving is prevalent or where buses are the primary mode of transit. Intelligent syncing of traffic signals has the potential to reduce average commutes by more than 5 percent in developing cities where most people travel by bus. Real-time navigation alerts drivers to delays and helps them choose the fastest route. Smart-parking apps point them directly to available spots, eliminating time spent fruitlessly circling city blocks.

Cities can be catalysts for better health

The sheer density of cities makes them critical although currently underutilized platforms for addressing health. Recognizing that the role of technology in healthcare is broad and evolving by the day, we analyze only digital applications that offer cities room to play a role. We quantify their potential impact on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), the primary metric used by the World Health Organization to convey the global disease burden, reflecting not only years of life lost to early death but also productive and healthy life lost to disability or incapacity. If cities deploy the applications included in our analyses to their fullest effect, we see the potential to reduce DALYs by 8 to 15 percent.

Applications that help prevent, treat, and monitor chronic conditions , such as diabetes or cardiovascular disease, could make the biggest difference in the developed world. Remote-patient-monitoring systems have the potential to reduce the health burden in high-income cities by more than 4 percent. These systems use digital devices to take vital readings, then transmit them securely to doctors in another location for assessment. This data can alert both patient and doctor when early intervention is needed, heading off complications and hospitalizations.

Cities can use data and analytics to identify demographic groups with elevated risk profiles and target interventions more precisely. So-called mHealth interventions can send out lifesaving messages about vaccinations, sanitation, safe sex, and adherence to antiretroviral therapy regimens. In low-income cities with high infant-mortality rates, data-based interventions focused on maternal and child health alone could reduce DALYs by more than 5 percent. Another 5 percent reduction is possible if developing cities use infectious-disease surveillance systems to stay a step ahead of fast-moving epidemics. Telemedicine, which provides clinical consultations by videoconference, can also be lifesaving in low-income cities with doctor shortages.

Smart cities can deliver a cleaner and more sustainable environment

As urbanization, industrialization, and consumption grow, environmental pressures multiply. Applications such as building-automation systems, dynamic electricity pricing, and some mobility applications could combine to cut emissions by 10 to 15 percent.

Water -consumption tracking, which pairs advanced metering with digital feedback messages, can nudge people toward conservation and reduce consumption by 15 percent in cities where residential water usage is high. In many parts of the developing world, the biggest source of water waste is leakage from pipes. Deploying sensors and analytics can cut those losses by up to 25 percent. Applications such as pay-as-you-throw digital tracking can reduce the volume of solid waste per capita by 10 to 20 percent. Overall, cities can save 25 to 80 liters of water per person each day and reduce unrecycled solid waste by 30 to 130 kilograms per person annually.

Air-quality sensors do not automatically address the causes of pollution, but they can identify the sources and provide the basis for further action. Beijing reduced deadly airborne pollutants by roughly 20 percent in less than a year by closely tracking the sources of pollution and regulating traffic and construction accordingly. Sharing real-time air-quality information with the public via smartphone apps enables individuals to take protective measures. This can reduce negative health effects by 3 to 15 percent, depending on current pollution levels.

Smart cities can create a new type of digital urban commons and enhance social connectedness

Community is hard to quantify, but MGI surveyed urban residents to determine if digital channels for communicating with local officials as well as digital platforms that facilitate real-world interactions (such as Meetup and Nextdoor) can have an impact. Our analysis suggests that using these types of applications could nearly double the share of residents who feel connected to the local community, and nearly triple the share who feel connected to local government.

Establishing channels for two-way communication between the public and local agencies could make city governments more responsive. Many city agencies maintain an active presence on social networks, and others have developed their own interactive citizen apps. In addition to disseminating information, these channels create vehicles for residents to report concerns, collect data, or weigh in on planning issues. Paris has implemented a participatory budget, inviting anyone to post project ideas and then holding online votes to decide which ones merit funding.

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Becoming a smart city is not a strategy for job creation, but smart solutions can make local labor markets more efficient and slightly lower the cost of living.

Many local officials want to know if becoming a smart city will lead to an infusion of high-paying tech jobs or accelerate a wave of automation. Our analysis finds a slightly positive net impact on formal employment. Smart technologies will directly eliminate some jobs (such as administrative and field jobs in city government) while creating others (such as maintenance, driving roles, and temporary installation jobs). E-career centers can have a modest positive impact by creating more efficient mechanisms for hiring and drawing more unemployed and inactive people into the workforce. Data-driven formal education and online retraining programs can enhance a city’s pool of skills. Digitizing government functions such as business licensing, permitting, and tax filing can free local enterprises from red tape, contributing to a more entrepreneurial business climate.

Many of the world’s most dynamic and desirable cities have serious housing shortages , driving up rents and home prices. Expanding the supply of housing can bring down those costs. In many places, bureaucracy bogs down land acquisition, environmental studies, design approvals, and permitting. Digitizing these processes can remove risks and delays, encouraging more construction. In addition, most cities have a surprising amount of land sitting idle that could be suitable for infill housing. Creating open-source cadastral databases can help to identify land parcels for development.

Smart applications produce savings in other areas, such as encouraging more efficient usage of utilities and the healthcare system. Products such as home-security systems, personal-alert devices, and lifestyle wearables involve consumer purchases, but they offer value that many are willing to pay for. Mobility applications offer new value as well, although e-hailing may encourage people to take more rides than they once did. However, e-hailing and other sharing applications make it possible for some people to forgo private vehicle ownership. MGI estimates that the average person could save as much as 3 percent on current annual expenditures.

MGI took a snapshot of deployment in 50 cities around the world, not to crown the world’s smartest city but to show the full sweep of activity under way around the globe. This includes assessment of each city’s technology base, its current application rollout, and public adoption.

Download and print a smart-city snapshot showing deployment progress.

Our view of each city’s technology base looked at the extent of sensors and devices , the quality of communication networks, and the presence of open data portals. Among the most advanced are Amsterdam, New York, Seoul, Singapore, and Stockholm—but even these front-runners are only about two-thirds of the way toward what constitutes a fully comprehensive technology base today. In general, cities across China, East Asia, Europe, and North America have relatively strong tech bases, as do select cities in the Middle East. But those in Africa, India, and Latin America lag behind, particularly in installing the sensor layer, the most capital-intensive element.

We gauged each city’s progress in implementation using a checklist of current smart applications. Mobility has been a top priority for most cities, but those places with the highest number of applications implemented overall—London, Los Angeles, New York, Seoul, Shenzhen, and Singapore—have branched out into multiple domains. Some cities have not yet implemented the applications with the greatest potential to address some of their priority issues.

MGI conducted online surveys in all of the cities analyzed to gauge how residents feel about the technologies already at work in their environment. We found that Asian cities are the strongest performers in awareness, usage, and satisfaction, while European cities lag. Positive adoption and awareness appear correlated with having a young population that not only accepts a more digital way of doing things but also expects it.

Smart-city technologies help cities get more out of their assets, whether they have extensive legacy systems or are building from scratch. There is no getting around the need to invest in physical assets and maintenance, but smart technologies can add new capabilities as core components are upgraded.

Infrastructure investment once locked cities into capital-intensive and extremely long-term plans. Now, using the right combination of traditional construction and smart solutions, they can respond more dynamically to how demand is changing. If population growth surges in a far-flung neighborhood, adding a new subway or bus line with the accompanying fleet expansion may take years. By contrast, a privately operated on-demand minibus service could be up and running much faster.

City government does not have to be the sole funder and operator of every type of service and infrastructure system. While implementing most of the applications that we examined would fall to the public sector, the majority of the initial investment could come from private actors (Exhibit 2). Public financing may be reserved for only those public goods that must be provided by the government. Furthermore, more than half of the initial investment that needs to be made by the public sector would generate a positive financial return, which opens the door to partnerships .

Adding more actors to the mix is a positive, since it increases adoption and applies more creativity to the available data. When private-sector innovations spring up organically, the role of government may involve regulating, convening key actors, offering subsidies, or changing purchasing decisions. Rather than taking a master-planning approach, some cities position themselves as ecosystems, creating consortia and even physical collaboration spaces.

Some cities are starting their transformations with inherent advantages such as wealth, density, and existing high-tech industries. But even places that lack these ingredients can set themselves apart with vision, good management, a willingness to break with conventional ways of doing things, and a relentless commitment to meeting the needs of residents. There are many blank canvases for the private sector, not for profits, and technologists to fill—and above all, individuals should be empowered to shape the future of the cities they call home.

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Lola Woetzel is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Shanghai office and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute; Jaana Remes is a partner in the San Francisco office; Brodie Boland is an associate partner the Washington, DC, office, where John Means is a partner; Katrina Lv is a partner in the Shenzhen office; Suveer Sinha is a partner in the Mumbai office; Gernot Strube is a senior partner in the Munich office; Jonathan Law is a partner in the New York office; Andrés Cadena is a partner in the Bogotá office; and Valerie von der Tann is a consultant in the Berlin office.

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